Limbo
by KhalaniK
Summary: When grief and regret are too much to bear, sometimes we choose to escape. Zechs discovers that the world is not always so obliging and that, sometimes, escape is impossible.
1. The Dirt in Your Eye

Title: Limbo

Chapter: 1/12: The Dirt in Your Eye

Pairing: Past Treize/Zechs

Spoliers: Series, EW

Warnings: Death themes, intoxication, male/male sexual situations (none terribly explicit), swears, grief, angst, debatable sap, and flashbacks throughout.

Notes: This story is inspired stylistically, thematically - really, in every way - by the beautiful and brilliant Lightening Arc by LoveyouHateyou (you can find him in my Favorite Authors section). I love his stories so much, and Limbo is, in a small and humble way, a sort of tribute to them. Limbo takes place in the same story line as my first fic, "Traitor (Breaking Up is Hard to Do)," though it's not a direct continuation. Every chapter is from Zechs's POV; most of the story takes place between the end of the series and Endless Waltz.

Also, on a technical note, GW officer ranks are insane to me, so I'm using the standard Army ranks closely shared by the US, Canada, Britain, and Australia. I also don't believe that somebody like Milliardo Peacecraft could stay 'dead' forever. People are too nosey, especially the press.

I hope you enjoy.

Limbo 1: The Dirt in Your Eye

There was seething, my blood boiling, my attention utter…data and images integrated seamlessly with my body…the gritting of teeth, the cruel bite of defeat, one last desperate gesture, a brief relapse of sanity…A fireball, deafening, white light and heat…I'm burning, crumbling, screaming…

The sound died in my throat, eaten up by a nothing, or a vacuum, or a tube…I clawed at it, but only feebly. I felt a warm hand that harshly grabbed, making me stop. A ripping sound and then I couldn't move. My mouth opened in a soundless cry that would have been pitiful if heard. I was blind. Bound. I swore I heard a voice. A blackness swallowed me head first…

It was hot in my nightmare – stiflingly so. It wasn't like the soaking damp heat of Africa or the arid parch of the Gobi. It was more unreal than that. It was a caricature of heat, an obscene exaggeration from the mind of a lunatic. It was a blistering hotness in waves and waves, like an infernal ocean washing over me. I was trapped in the cramped confines of an oven, a crush of metal and glass. I pushed against it with my hands and my insides twisted. Panic. Every breath agony. My head was wrenched at an angle, held inextricably by a smashed helmet. I pushed until I screamed, a wet and wretched sound. I tasted metal. It was dark. So dark….

And then very suddenly, like some divine explosion, there was a light. It was a yellow light, a yellow reflection off of yellowed squares with wavy rings of amber and black mottles. Speckles. Flecks. Dots. Spots. Dapples. Words, descriptive, trolled around in my brain. This wasn't an apparition from my psyche. There was a real smell, musty and dull, like an old mop head. My eyes were receiving real light, for they burned from lack of use. I could hear a rush of successive beeps marking a rhythm that quickened by increments as my alertness returned to me. No, this was no dream. It was wisdom out of madness. Something out of Nothing. My nightmare, it seemed, was over.

My head lolled to the left, where I saw a man seated in a chair against a white wall. He was looking at a folder, scanning it diligently. And then, sensing that I was watching him, his eyes met mine. They were brown, like dirt. He stood and walked to my bedside, toting his reading. Out of his pocket he pulled a pen which lit up when he clicked it. He held that intensely bright light up to each of my eyes, and a pleased look crept onto his face as I tried to turn my head to avoid it. His heavy hand came down on my forehead to keep me still. I had felt this hand before.

"Blink twice if you can understand me."

He was probably in his mid-thirties, with light brown hair and a five-o-clock shadow. He wore an un-tucked polo shirt and a pair of wrinkled slacks. He looked average. Not ugly, even with dirt eyes. From him emitted a faint waft of cologne that had gone stale.

"Blink twice if you can understand me."

I blinked once, which took an inordinate amount of concentration. I blinked again and he nodded.

"Good. Fine." Then with the pen again. "Follow the light with your eyes."

My performance appeared to please him, which he indicated with a small sound – a tiny "hm." He opened his folder and wrote in it. I watched his thick eyebrows furrow, two caterpillars edging closer, maybe for a fight, maybe for love. What did it matter? He checked the flow of the two IVs next to me and glanced at the monitor that displayed my temperature (101 degrees Fahrenheit/38 degrees Celsius) and heart rate (68 beats per minute). The date was January 21st, 196. More writing.

"How do you feel?"

How. Did. I. Feel. Question mark. Was I on fire? Was I writhing in agony? No, and that was progress. I felt like…what? High? Yep, that. I was high as a bloody kite, like I was floating in a warm bath, my body heavy but somehow still buoyant on a sea of…white sheets.

"Fine" is what I tried to say, but what came forth instead of a voice was a crackling whisper, like the crinkling of a paper bag. I tried again with no better result.

"Oh," the man said, "hold your hand below your Adam's apple – like this." He demonstrated on himself.

I lifted my unreasonably heavy hand to my neck and pressed down on a gauze bandage. This time, a deep, staticky rumble approximated the words "I'm fine." The man smiled softly.

"So, you're not in too much pain? Good. I was a little worried. I can't guarantee that you'll continue feeling fine, though…."

He turned around and rummaged in a drawer. He pulled out a cord and attached it to a machine on the table next to me. I could see that one of the IV cords ran through the unit. He then gave me one end to hold in my left hand, a large, red button comfortably within thumb's reach.

"This is for your morphine. You can press the button when you feel pain. It'll only give you a dose every two hours, so keep that in mind. I can't give you any more than that. One click, though, and you should feel better almost instantly."

Morphine. I wondered why I needed morphine. I played a game of Guess the Injury. I gazed down and to my sides to find all of my limbs in place. My arms were scraped up, but I didn't appear to have stitches. I bent my legs enough to judge that I wasn't in a cast.

'Great,' I thought, because that left internal injury, the kind I was always best at inflicting on myself, the kind that loves bleeding without symptom and throwing blood clots into brains and lungs.

The man picked up his folder and scribbled more notes in it. I do mean scribbled. His pen wagged furiously, like that notebook was an outlet for intense and explosive creativity. "You were hurt badly. You primary injuries were internal, which I corrected to the best of my abilities with surgery."

Neat, I won, though the 'to the best of my abilities' part seemed like a strange conversational insertion. Was this guy a doctor? Maybe a physician's assistant? A nurse? An aide? A humanoid robotics mechanic with a very good sense of anatomical analogy?

"Unfortunately, you suffered from a massive infection after the surgery. You had a fever of 104, so I gave you a large dose of pantezomycin, not knowing that the resulting allergic reaction was going to be worse than the infection itself."

That allergy was on my dog tags. Ah, but I'd stopped wearing those some time ago, hadn't I? He closed his folder again and began fiddling with the morphine machine. His shoulders tensed and released, and he shifted his weight from one leg to the other as he stood there, pressing buttons. Squirmy – that's what he was, like he was uncomfortable in his own skin.

"Your throat closed up and I had to give you a tracheotomy. That's why you're having trouble talking. Don't worry, though. It'll heal and your voice will return to normal."

He was pushing the up-down button that controlled the dose level. Up, up, up, down, down, down. Beep, beep, beep, squirm, squirm, squirm. Those thickish fingers of his were working hard on what appeared to be nothing at all significant, like he was just pressing the buttons for the sake of making noise. Medical Guy's Morphine Drip Symphony in Beep Major.

"You sustained what now seems to be only a mild head injury. I was afraid that it was serious and that your brain would swell, so I put you in a barbiturate coma. Not long ago I pulled that IV, hopeful that you would awaken on your own." A pause. "And you did."

He didn't sound especially pleased anymore.

The hurried button-pushing stopped and he turned back to look at me. There was a glimmer in his dirty eye that I couldn't place. He wore a tiny gold cross around his neck that nested comfortably on a bed of thick chest hair. He was quiet for a few moments, staring at me frankly, assessing me.

"Do you know who you are?"

I thought about it; focused my mind completely on the task. My brain felt full of sludge and garbage, and I waded through it, grabbing at the shiny things that seemed valuable. I got flashes, pieces, faces, names. It was on the tip of my tongue. The crux of this puzzle, the piece that would pull the scattered bits to it like iron shavings to a magnet, was just out of reach. I pressed my hand to my throat.

"I think I do, but not exactly…." I trailed off.

"Not exactly? Maybe I can help jog your memory. Do you recognize the name White Fang?"

White Fang. I could see the White Fang in my head. Dorothy, so enthusiastic, talented, and deluded. Quinze with his puffy vest and coffee breath. What a bunch of misfits we were. I could smell the bridge on my commandeered space station. From a kingly vantage point, a chair like a throne, I could see everything – my mother, Earth, who gave life to me, the bastard son who said he hated her…. But it was only a fight, wasn't it? Don't teenage boys do that sometimes with their mothers…?

"How about the Gundams? Ring any bells?"

Five bells, to be exact. Five suits, five children. I had near encyclopedic knowledge of Gundam 01. And the Gundam Epyon, the devil itself. The mobile insane asylum. I remembered the explosion, my head in a vise, the crushing sensation. I touched my face. Beneath my fingers, my skin was full, lumpy in places, and completely smooth, like a balloon filled with liquid. The sharp contours I remembered were now dully rounded curves. I was wearing a bloated mask of blood and tissue.

Yes, I remembered who I was – even if this face betrayed my memories. It was a slow, sickening realization that the man must have picked up in my body language. He nodded and made that "hm" sound again.

"I helped you figure it out, didn't I? No need to thank me. I live to serve."

Whatever glint had been in his eye was now dripping from his words. I could practically taste the sweet reek of spite in the air.

"You have a few slight maxillofacial fractures - nothing that will permanently affect your facial structure. I wish I'd taken a picture of you two weeks ago. You barely looked human."

He leaned over to make sure I clearly heard what he was about to say.

"But don't worry, you'll be back to your beautiful self just in time to be taken into custody. I'm sure you'll make some big, burly inmate a very happy man."

His mouth curved into a crooked smile.

"I bet you'd actually get off on something like that. Am I right?"

Without sedation, I might have told him to eat shit, but as my current situation stood, I wasn't lucid enough to be really offended. I was more interested in the way his strange actions were suddenly explained – the violent scribbling, the ceaseless squirming, the little performance at the morphine machine. This man had been waiting for me to wake up, and not because he was rooting for me.

"As you might be able to tell, this isn't a hospital."

One glance around the room supported his words. From that nasty, water-stained ceiling to the cracks in the walls, the place looked like a well-used fallout shelter.

"This is a resource satellite. My associate found you in the Libra's wreckage and thought it would be a good idea to save your life."

I put my hand to my neck. "And you didn't."

The man sighed and ran his hand through his thinning hair. He wore a silver wedding band. I wagered that he had one, no, two children. Why, oh, why, was their daddy with me instead of them? I wondered if he was going to smother me with a pillow and go back to them with a huge bag of Balthazar's takeout, an apology for being away for so long, so sorry, kids, but daddy had important work to do, justice to serve, revenge to exact, and so on….

"I'm an idiot who would screw his strongest convictions for his Hippocratic Oath. Personally, I think you're a vile piece of rubbish." He snorted and shook his head. "You have no idea how close I came to not giving you a trache when you had that allergic reaction."

When our eyes met, I didn't look away. I couldn't, because this man was a wonder to me. His candor was remarkable, something too often withheld from me when I commanded the White Fang and before when I was in OZ. I wanted to hear more.

"Why?"

I wanted to know exactly what about me made him tick like a bomb. Was it my swollen face? My sandpaper voice? The creepy way my ice-blue irises looked surrounded by a red sea of burst blood vessels? Or perhaps it was all of the incomprehensively atrocious deeds I committed before I lit myself up in the ballistic firestorm that got me here in the first place? He answered quickly and forcefully, as though he had been waiting an eternity for me to ask.

"You are a miserable cretin who takes his personal problems out on every person in the Earth Sphere. You can't decide whether you want to be a soldier or a prince or a diplomat or a terrorist. Why are you so goddamn special? Everybody else manages their own problems in a sensible and private way. Instead, you drag your trash out in the street so that everybody can smell it."

He balled his hands into fists and his face flushed with rage. A vein on his temple rose, protruding like a twisted worm beneath his skin.

"And do you have any idea how many people died because of your little identity crisis? They haven't even been able to get a final count! They keep finding people here and there, floating, mangled, frozen in space. All because of you, Milliardo Peacecraft or Zechs Merquise or whatever the hell you want to call yourself. Not that it matters – I doubt anybody who cares about you is alive to give a shit."

It was the most unselfconscious rant I'd ever heard. What a perverse sort of honor, I thought, to have this display directed at me.

I did something unexpected then – I laughed. I let my hand drop to the bed and just let the air pass through my tracheotomy hole with a raspy wheeze. It was a pathetic sound, one that was obviously disturbing the man. His eyes pinched into two narrow slits.

"Why the hell are you laughing? What's so damn funny?"

I was laughing because I was wrong about that dream I had earlier. Like a blissfully ignorant fool, I thought that the worst of it was over. What I realized just then, in the middle of his speech, was that the real nightmare would be my waking life from that point until Hell finally accepted me.

I pressed down on the red button in my hand. The whitewash of euphoric warmth quieted me, lulled me, and vanquished the fearsome beast looming just beyond this bout of mania. It was so lovely that even Dr. Dirt looked pleasant as I faded into black.


	2. Meeting My Pretend Grandfather

Title: Limbo  
Chapter: 2/12: Meeting My Pretend Grandfather  
Pairing: Past Treize/Zechs  
Spoliers: Series, EW  
Warnings: Death themes, intoxication, male/male sexual situations (none terribly explicit), swears, grief, angst, cynicism, debatable sap, and flashbacks throughout. I'll rate it M, mostly for the cursing. And the sexy bits.  
Disclaimer: I don't own any part of GW. No monies have been or will be made off of this thing.

Please see Limbo 1 for very important notes.

My most heartfelt gratitude goes out to everyone who took the time to review/comment on chapter 1!

I hope you enjoy chapter 2.

xXx

"So, where do you think you want to go?"

What a ridiculous question. Where did I - the international war criminal running from the law - want to go? What the hell did it matter what I wanted? Of course, I didn't say this. After all, this man was trying to help me for some reason I couldn't fathom.

I remained silent. My voice had fully recovered, and my face was more or less back to normal, minus a couple of new, faint scars, but still I kept my comments to a bare minimum because I found it exceedingly difficult to say anything that wasn't absolutely cruel or blatantly nihilistic. I was in pain – miserable, flat, invariable – and every room seemed so unrealistically small, like I'd swallowed some sort of potion that gave every office, hallway, and hangar the claustrophobic, cramped feeling of a coffin.

"There's a transport leaving from here in a few days bound for Bastion-Elise Space Port. Maybe we could find something for you near there."

Gosney, whose first name I didn't know, was an older man with the sort of dignified and well-manicured beard of a Russian tsar. He was the "associate" that the nice doctor told me about the month before, the one who decided that my life was worth saving. In that regard, I hated him. Aside from that, he was so much more than I deserved. He was the operations manager for the resource satellite we were on, which was temporarily defunct due to funding shortages. He still kept everything square, hopeful for that one day when mining would resume again.

Life in space had paused, held its breath as it navigated the viscous murk of cleanup and reconstruction. Space was a mess, a literal mess of scrap, and everyone in space was expected to pitch a hand - even at the expense of the economy. That's where the rest of the satellite crew was. That's where the money was. That they alone had to clean up their back yard after their neighbors' drunken night of debauchery was something they dared not openly resent.

"You can speak French, I assume?"

"Well enough," I said, shifting uncomfortably in my chair. They took away my bed a week earlier, stating that they had to remove all traces of their makeshift hospital before the big inspection.

The inspection was the reason that Gosney was rushing to find me a place to stay. The newly installed federal government had determined that there were 126 mobile suits unaccounted for after the war - more than enough to wreak immense havoc on the fledgling ESUN. In response, they decided to inspect all of the colonies and resource satellites in Earth orbit for rogue suits. Gosney wasn't supposed to know of his satellite's upcoming inspection, but he claimed that he "knew somebody" in the government who notified him in advance.

Favors. Closed-door ass-kissing. Quid pro quo. "Knowing somebody." This was the stuff that Romefeller, OZ, and The Specials were made of. I had hoped, with the tiny part of me that was still capable of such things, that people would have changed – if only by the smallest of measures. What a stupidly naive thought, even for me, Prince of Stupid Hopes. How could I have expected one war to rewrite millennia of social conventions?

"Where, exactly, do you think I should go?"

The silent subtext of my question was: "Who would possibly be insane or misguided enough to rent, lease, or sell any property to me?" It wasn't as though a six-foot-one Scandinavian with over two feet of white-blond hair and one of the most loathed and distinct faces in recent memory could easily blend into a crowd. I'm not an egomaniac, but I did have some grasp of the enormity of what I'd done on Libra - even if I chose to ignore the event or drown the memory of it in pain killers.

"Honestly," he said with reservation, scratching his beard, "I would look for somebody elderly. Somebody who might not recognize you or, frankly, might not care." He turned his computer around so that I could see the monitor. "Like this ad: 'Older gentleman looking for a tenant for a guest house on his farm. Private quarters, kitchen and bathroom with shower. Fully furnished. Month-to-month. Cash only.' Cash only. That's not something you see every day."

That was one of the biggest hurdles facing my exile from MO-VIII: I had no official identity. (Please - spare me the rolled eyes and groans; I'm aware of the obnoxious reoccurrence of this theme in my life.) The man dually known as Zechs Merquise and Milliardo Peacecraft was, according to Gosney, declared dead after an "exhaustive" search. I couldn't access any of the large sum of money I'd saved from lifelong lack of expenditures, and I couldn't even open up an electronic bank account without an officially sanctioned ESUN identification number.

I shrugged with my left shoulder, the one that didn't hurt. "I'm a bit short on cash these days."

"Well, don't worry too much about it. Let's see what the guys can scrape together."

Everything about me at that time had been scraped together: my body, my wardrobe, and suddenly, my future. That vicious doctor hadn't gone back on his Hippocratic Oath, so, medically, I was functioning as well as could be expected for the damage done. I also had a small wardrobe of hand-me-down clothes, not one article of which fit well, all of which had a strange smell that I couldn't place - something between grease and sickeningly strong fabric softener. I was at the mercy of the crew of that satellite, all of whom had decided to either actively protect me or, as the doctor did, not kill me. It was all one in the same, really, each option pissing me off equally. I despised myself for being so ungrateful, but I couldn't stop. I don't even think I cared enough to want to stop.

I didn't have the will or energy to argue with this man about where I should go. I'd survived this long as his charge, but moreover, I didn't want to be in control of my future. I wanted to be pushed away, kicked out, forced and judged. Cursed. Damned. Exiled. In my mind, it was the most appropriate perspective I could have, one that I hoped would let me sit back and get punched in the face like I deserved.

With a grimace of discomfort, I closed my eyes and let my head fall back against the wall. "I'll leave it to you."

Later that week, the transport bound for Earth docked in hangar two. The waiting captain, knowing nothing more than that I was a person of interest to the ESUN government, wanted as little to do with me as possible. He asked Gosney to tell me to bang on the cockpit door twice when I was ready to leave. When we landed in the space port in Paris, I was to once again bang on the door twice before exiting immediately thereafter. That, it seemed, would be the extent of our interaction, and that suited me just fine.

"I can't believe we're just letting him go like this," I heard the doctor say to Gosney as I was packing my few personal effects. He didn't even attempt to keep his voice out of my earshot. "Somebody should call someone."

"Why haven't you?" Gosney asked.

Yes, why hadn't he? What about being taken into custody in shackles? Certainly the doctor would have taken great pleasure in witnessing that. What about the big, burly inmate who would make me his bitch? What was it that the man said? Oh yes, that I'd like it like that. Because I'm a filthy fag, apparently, and God hates fags. He explained that to me one day when he was changing my bandages, so very gently cleaning my wounds, his hands warm and cautious.

"Damn him," was all the doctor said in reply, the snarling curve of his lips audible.

Minutes later, he and Gosney were escorting me to the hangar. Initially, I wondered why the doctor was bothering to see me off, considering his open and shameless contempt of me, but I figured that he probably couldn't pass up one final opportunity to sling what were now accustomed insults at me.

"You look like a serial killer," he remarked, giving my apparel the once-over with his dirty eyes. "I guess that's not too far from the truth."

I caught my reflection in the darkened glass of the hangar's control room. One of "the guys" had given me a black hooded sweatshirt that ended up being perfect for concealing my hair, which I tied back in a low pony tail. Another generous donor supplied the aviator sunglasses, eerily similar to the ones I used to wear in OZ before my mask was made. I was told by a young, sloppy mechanic with a skittish smile that they were quite fashionable. These two items, coupled with a pair of too-baggy cargo pants and a well-worn pair of utility boots, made me look very much the part of the shady drifter. In my mind and theirs, this was preferable to looking like Milliardo Peacecraft or Zechs Merquise, both of whom were as real to me as a phantom.

I set my bag on the floor of the hanger, cringing as I bent over. I was really only in serious pain when I moved - which was not often. I has scarcely done more than walk to the bathroom a couple times a day since they took my bed away. The rest of my time had been spent lying on the green couch in Gosney's office, sleeping or wishing for sleep, staring at the ceiling, eyes and mind blank as if in shock. Perhaps I was in shock...

The doctor pulled out four prescription bottles from his pockets and gave each label a cursory, confirming glance. "I know you won't exactly be able to go into a pharmacy and get refills, so here's enough Tetracontin to last you for a while. It's wicked stuff, so no more than two a day. And don't take it for more than a month straight, or you'll regret it."

He tossed the containers at me one at a time, and I caught them only by the grace of resource satellite physics, where partial gravity made everything seem to move in slow motion.

"Thanks." I tried to say it earnestly, but it came out flat and sarcastic.

"Fuck you."

The doctor, whose name is still a mystery to me, then turned and walked out of the hangar, back to his wife and possible children. That cruel man, my most enthusiastic and creative accuser, had taken nearly two months away from his family to care for somebody he despised passionately. I envied his dedication as much as I resented his vitriol.

I remembered being like that, a consummate professional. Principled, skilled, incorruptible. That man openly hated me, but he never let his personal feelings get in the way of the business of making me healthy. Even if he was a prick embroiled in ethical conflict, he still stood for something larger than himself, an institution, a tradition thousands of years older than him.

What did I stand for? Murder? Terror? Blind, agonizing despair? Surely not peace. Surely nothing good. I was certain that had nowhere to stand, no home to return to, no family who would accept me, no friends to support me, no other…person...that one person…

There was a sharp, prodding sensation in my chest, behind my broken ribs but not because of them - a stabbing, like an ice pick being driven through me by a hammer. Intense, nauseating hurt. I shook one of my new Tetracontin pills into my hand and swallowed it dry.

"I contacted the woman who placed that ad I showed you. It's her grandfather's place. He's a 73-year-old retiree who, from what she told me, spends his days puttering around his farm. He's just looking for some extra income, she said." Gosney handed me a piece of paper. "Here's his information."

Vadimas Kazlauskas. Definitely not a Frenchman. No matter, I thought, as long as he knew how to accept money in exchange for services.

"Oh, and one more thing," Gosney said, shrugging a small backpack off of his broad shoulder. "I think this should keep you afloat for a while."

He handed the bag to me and I unzipped it. Inside were bundles and bundles of cash. I estimated that there was about five years' worth of Zechs Merquise's quite enviable salary in there.

I looked up at him, incredulous. He must have been at least three inches taller than me. "Should I ask where this came from?"

Gosney chuckled quietly. "I sold that beast of yours for scrap after I gutted it. I had the onboard computer destroyed. Whatever was in that box was not meant to be tampered with or reproduced. Shouldn't even have been made in the first place, I think."

No argument from me.

The money suddenly in my possession was a small fraction of one percent of what Epyon's Gundanium was worth at fair market value. He probably got even more for it, considering the source. The rest of the money he no doubt deserved for his troubles - whatever one does with 270 million credits, give or take. Probably give.

"I don't understand this…" I muttered in lieu of thanking the man for keeping me alive.

"It's no more than what the Lord asks of every man," Gosney replied, offering his hand to me. I stared at the roughness of it, calloused with manual labor, doing the work of God or Jesus or Allah or whatever, and then I shook it.

"I wish you the best. I think this year will be good for you," he said, smiling.

Oh, how I wanted to laugh in his face, but I was so unamused and overtaken by bitter disbelief that the best I could manage was a small grunt. As I turned to go, he called out to me one last time, cupping his hands around his mouth to project his already booming voice:

"And your name is Erik Iversen now. Don't forget!"

I, the newly christened Erik Iversen, boarded the waiting transport and, as instructed, pounded on the cockpit door twice before strapping into a pull-down jump seat in the cargo bay. I was feeling the sweet effects of the Tetracontin even before the transport slipped out of the satellite's hangar. It was magnificent, putting me in a fine mood that would not be dulled even by the sight of so much mobile suit wreckage outside the port window. It was as though the drug crossed the wires in my brain, flooding me with ecstasy when I should have been hating every breath I took.

Still, I shuddered when I saw a disembodied arm float past and closed my eyes to stave off a sick sensation that was threatening to kill my buzz.

I was awakened in indeterminable amount of time later by the violent jostling of the ship as it entered the Earth's atmosphere. The landing was smooth, which was as much due to Bastion-Elise's newly paved runways as it was the pilot's skill. When it came to space ports, B-E had a reputation as one of the finest.

Unlike space, the world was still working, ticking along as it always had. Construction was underway. Business was thriving. I felt that Earth shouldn't have been the same, like it should have collapsed in on itself a little, taken on a little humility, a little limp, a little sobriety. Just a little. But Earthers are industrious little monsters who balk loudly at defeat, and they take up their little shovels and their little day planners in a little show of "Fuck you" to whomever - maybe to nobody in particular, maybe to God, maybe to each other, maybe to an idea or an afterimage of crippling fear.

I don't think I was particularly pleased about being back on Earth. Upon returning from space, an Earth native will typically marvel at the crispness of the air, the fresh unpredictability of the breeze, and generally wonder how they did without such splendid things for so long. It was winter; I should have at least found the chill noteworthy. But instead I was numb, unimpressed, and single-mindedly fixated on finding a taxi to take me to the province of Picardy.

The gravity killed my weakened knees with every step as I approached a line of eager, vacant cabs that lined the terminal's exit. Dozens of people moved with purposeful steps towards the vehicles, rattling off the important places they had to go, implying with their destinations their occupations, income levels, and personal habits. There was an electricity under that overhang, the thrill of being back home or of starting a well-deserved vacation. It seemed misplaced to me, that energy. Shouldn't there have been a slow drag, a trail of mourning, any indication at all that something substantial had happened - something immeasurably enormous and life-altering?

I walked to the nearest one and told the cabbie my destination through a crack in the passenger side window.

"Saint-Quentin? Are you crazy?" Crazy? That's still being debated. "That's two hours away. I'm sorry, sir," was the man's flustered response. Not only did he refuse, he rolled up his window and pretended not to see me. He did so with such agitation that I entertained a little fear that he might have recognized me.

But after accosting several more taxis and facing rejection after rejection, I knew that their refusals weren't because of my appearance as much as they were about making the 370 kilometer round trip to the middle of nowhere. Finally, a petite woman with short reddish hair and a strikingly colorful scarf around her neck showed a modicum of interest.

"Picardy? Oh, it's beautiful in every season. Why do you want to go there?"

I hadn't expected to have to explain myself. "My grandfather," I lied.

"Well, I'm going to charge you extra!" she warned, pointing at the meter.

I pulled a thousand ESUN credits out of my sweatshirt pocket and held it up to the window.

"I think that will be just fine, sir. Just fine." The smile on her face told me that she was more than "just fine" with the arrangement.

As soon as we cleared the terminal, I crossed my arms and slumped down in the back seat.

"Wake me when we get there," I said, already well on my way to sleep.

"Of course."

It was dusk when we hit rugged country road. The rough ride made it impossible for me to stay even in a drug-induced sleep, so I sat up and rested my head against the window, staring out at the expanse of farmland that was wet with winter's showers. There were tall, green hedges along the road, much like I had seen when I was stationed in Great Britain for a few months of training. At that time, I was incapable of seeing beauty in anything, leaving my mind to process things in the antiseptic way that one learns the nouns of a new language. Hedge. Grass. Sunset. Road. House.

"Almost there," my driver said, alternately eyeing the road, her GPS, and the rearview mirror where she could see my obscured face. She smiled at me.

This woman, I could tell, had balls. She was alone in a cab with a suspicious-looking young man, driving out to some remote farmland where, for all she knew, I was going to rape and murder her. I wanted to ask what gave her any reason to trust me, but I didn't want to beg the inevitable follow-up question of "Why shouldn't I trust you?" Instead, I continued looking out the window and lazily debating whether or not I should try falling asleep again.

About twenty minutes later, we pulled onto a long, muddy driveway. It was dark, and I could see a house up ahead. Every light in that place must have been on, making it glow like a beacon in the middle of a black sea. The driver stopped, twisted around in her seat, and waited with a patient smile until I handed her the money I flashed earlier. She was cute.

"I hope you enjoy visiting with your grandfather."

"We'll see," I replied, grabbing my bags and shutting the cab door behind me. I walked slowly up the creaking front steps, took a deep breath, and knocked.

The house was in a state of mild disrepair. On the porch, the paint was peeling around the windows, and there was a hole in the screen large enough to shove an apple through. Suddenly, the curtains parted and the face of who I assumed was Vadimas Kazlauskas peered out at me. Just as quickly as they had opened, they closed again. I heard footsteps inside and the sound of two deadbolts unlocking. The door swung open and a delighted-looking elderly man took me by the arm and led me into the kitchen.

"Welcome! Welcome! You're Mr. Iversen, yes? I'm happy you found me," he said, pulling a chair out from a small table and gesturing for me to sit down.

He took his seat across from me, grinning in the way that only an old man can. His gray eyes glistened under the overhead lamp. I wondered if he had been drinking or if he was just senile.

"So! I will take you to the house soon. But first, let's get the bad business out of the way. I charge twelve-hundred a month. That is with everything, though."

His French was very heavily accented. Mine, by virtue of being highly sanitized by an aristocrat's education, was really no better. I pulled money from my sweatshirt pocket, enough to pay for six months of rent, and set it on the table. He took exactly as much as he asked for per month and pushed the rest back to me.

"I'd like to pay for six months," I said, swallowing back a swiftly rising and completely unwarranted impatience with the man.

"No, no. Month-to-month. Month-to-month!" Mr. Kazlauskas was highly emphatic. He reminded me of Vito, the owner of an excellent delicatessen in Corsica that used to give out freebies to all of the soldiers. He was loved by all ranks, from sergeants to colonels. He used to call me "Flash."

I stared at him from behind my sunglasses. He was balding, with a comb-over and a sprinkling of discolored spots on his head. His eyebrows were bushy and retained some of the hue of what had once been dark hair. These distinctly elderly traits amplified the gregarious warmth that effused from him. He was grandfatherly in a way that my grandfather had never been, with his tight-lipped severity and disapproving frown.

"Fine."

"Okay!" he said as he rose from the table. He walked to the kitchen counter and picked up a covered glass bowl. "Let's go to your new home!"

We got in an old pickup truck and drove down another long, muddy road to a modest and well-tended guest house. It was in so much better condition that I wondered why he didn't move here instead. The porch lights were on, waiting for me. I'd never lived alone before, always stuffed in a bay with other soldiers or conveniently next door to them when I was high-ranking enough to get my own room. The palace had always been filled with the quiet but constant presence of servants, and Russia...there was so much life in Russia....

"Okay, okay! This is the living area," he said, waving his arm theatrically at the tastefully decorated sitting area. There was a couch and chair set and a bookshelf packed with books. I didn't want anything to do with those books. Reading was something that Milliardo Peacecraft loved to do, a waste of time, a foolish hobby shared with children and shut-ins. I told myself that I was neither, not knowing quite how to classify myself without using abrasive insults and expletives.

"This is your bedroom - the bathroom is right next to it." A bathroom with no mirror. How very fitting. I had no patience for my once intractable vanity, something I once indulged simply because I could, because it got me places, because it made certain people happy, because it was what I'd always done. In that period following the war, vanity had become old and vestigial. Completely pointless. Laughable.

The bedroom was nice. When I considered the bedding and furnishings here compared to the old man's house, I knew that the guest house must have been decorated by somebody else – maybe that granddaughter of his. Everything looked and smelled brand new, and it was clean to a fault. He led me to a small kitchen area, where he placed the covered bowl on the counter and opened one of the cupboards to retrieve a sauce pan.

"I made vegetable soup for you. You can heat it in this. Utensils are in the drawer."

I cleared my throat and looked at the bowl of soup. Carrots, celery, tomatoes, some sort of withered, cabbage-looking thing floating at the top. Kale? Chard? Pressure hit me then, filling up my forehead and cheeks uncomfortably. My drugged mind fumbled stupidly trying to explain the encounters I'd had since awakening from my coma. Why were most of the people I'd met - Gosney, "the guys," the cabbie, and this old man - so warm? Not even specifically to me. Why were they kind at all? What made them radiate after everything they'd had seen, after everything I'd done to them?

These little monsters - persevering and pugishly tenacious - were the things I'd once had the gall to hate. I did hate them. I hated them all. It was no joke that I wanted to destroy them indiscriminately. In the end, my rage made me insensitive even to the colonists, who weren't peaceful because they were better human beings, but rather because they'd get sucked out into an absolutely zero, dead vacuum if they weren't. Even then, standing in the kitchen of my new rental, I felt that old hate bleeding slowly through the dim haze of the Tetracontin. Rapidly overpowering that hate was a feeling of profound regret over what I'd become: a spiteful malcontent, a cold, bitter fucker not worth the frumpy clothes on his back let alone warm smiles and vegetable soup.

'Go the hell away already,' I wanted to say to the old man. Get the hell out and leave me alone. Take your goddamn soup and your new bedspread and shove them up your kind and considerate ass. Shit.

"Well, you look like you could use some rest, so I'll go now. If you need anything, there's a phone in the sitting room and my number is here," Mr. Kazlauskas said, pulling a crinkled scrap of paper out of his pocket and setting it on the counter. "Anything you need, you ask me."

I nodded and stood there in the kitchen until I heard that noisy pickup drive away. I then put the soup in the small refrigerator below the counter and wandered to the bedroom, turning off lights as I went. My eyelids felt leaden, dropping with an increased frequency that disoriented me. Pain blotted out by the powerful drugs, I bent easily to pull off my boots before falling back on the bed, exhausted and empty.

Before I fell asleep, I admired a painting of a quaint farmhouse mounted on the wall. How funny, I thought, that I was in there….


	3. I Think I Hate You

Title: Limbo  
Chapter: 3/12: I Think I Hate You  
Pairing: Past Treize/Zechs (made present-tense via flashbacks)  
Spoliers: Series, EW  
Warnings: Death themes, intoxication, male/male sexual situations, naughty language, grief, angst, cynicism, debatable instances of sap. Flashbacks throughout. Little kid-ness. Rated M for swears and dark matter.  
Disclaimer: I don't own any part of GW. No monies have been or will be made off of this thing.

Please see Limbo 1 for very important notes.

Thanks to all who have taken the time to review!

I hope you enjoy.

xxx

I spent the entire months of March and April in an extraordinary place, where memories, dreams, and reality comingled, entangled, and pulsated with ethereal vibrancy. My belly was warm, my muscles relaxed, every breath a contented sigh. I might have been smiling. Sleep and waking daydreams meshed together in a smooth continuum of surreality. How wonderful it was, how simple and replete with goodness. It was an ice cream cone in August, melting just a little, dripping onto my fingers…

This trance held me closely, only loosening its grip when hunger grew so intense that it penetrated the thick haze of my reverie. To my best estimation, this was about once every two or three days. Perhaps more. There was no way of knowing. Always, always, there was food in my refrigerator. Fresh foods. Homemade foods in glassware. Yogurts, butter, and cheeses occupied a whole shelf, and there was always fruit and bread in a small basket on the kitchen counter. Into the kitchen I'd float, cut a slice of bread, spread the easiest and most convenient thing onto it, if anything at all, slouch against the counter or sit in a chair or on the couch, chew, chew, sustain, sustain, drink some water - well water, metallic like blood - and float somewhere else...

In my terrifically self-absorbed state, I never once thought of where the food came from. It, like my bed and my drugs, were constants that I didn't consider limited. They were infinitely giving companions, better friends than any others, never asking in return. Never leading me on. Never asking the impossible. Sometimes I'd meander into the bathroom and take a shower, but only because I was raised in a First World country where one is expected to bathe at least once and a while. Sometimes it's difficult to forget a mother's words, a little song about taking a bath, clean the body, clean the soul, something, something…

Bed – my comforting, soft bed – was my new life. It was a cradle and I was a child, a young boy with the world at his feet. A country. A mother. A father. A palace. A future. A destiny. I was loved, supported, cuddled, validated, and encouraged. The love from our parents is something that we all take for granted. Not everyone recognizes it. Not everyone gets to hang onto it. I had it, if only for an instant, the briefest flicker of an eyelid. The love for our parents is the precursor to the love we'll reserve for our lovers, a love that conditions our hearts, lets us know that we have them to begin with, hints at just how large they are. How precious. How easily breakable. The love of my parents…sometimes I forget that I had it…but then, I did tend to confuse the issue…

xxx

"Isn't she beautiful, Milliardo?" my mother whispered, her voice saturated with excessive caution, fearful of disturbing her new baby.

It didn't look like anything would disturb that girl, the way she was sucking madly at my mother's naked breast, her tiny hands wrapped around that plump flesh as though someone would try to snatch it away at any moment. She made little grunting sounds, like the ravenous little animal she was.

I didn't get what was so great about it.

"I guess so," I replied, slowly backing away from side of the wooden rocking chair and making way for my father, who was in line to admire the newborn for the thousandth time.

"You were small like this once, son." My father's voice was so deep that it seemed to shake the windows in their panes. It had the fascinating quality of reverberating in my chest as well as his, which could be the most soothing or most terrifying sensation depending on whether I had been good or bad. He and I used to sit in that rocking chair, me on his lap, my head resting against the broad solidity of his torso, his heartbeat so strong in my ear. He'd read to me, and I'd feel the vibration of every word as I followed along, each syllable lulling me into calm, until I was so sleepy that I had to be carried to bed.

And now _she_ was in our chair being held - by my own mother, no less.

Father edged closer to them and very gently touched his baby daughter's baby-fine hair. I looked up at him and saw him smile in a way I'd never seen before. His eyes were soft and unguarded.

Was she beautiful? No! I couldn't stomach that little usurper. She was only a few weeks old and she already had full command of every single adult in a way that I could only dream of having. She was the apple of my father's eye and my mother's new obsession. Every whimper, cry, and facial expression was noted aloud by at least one person – oh, somebody's not happy! – and tended to immediately. To me, the firstborn son, it was a travesty of cosmic proportions.

One afternoon, when the baby was sleeping and my parents and nonnie weren't around, I sneaked into her room and stood next to her crib. I eyed her with disgust, my hands grasping tightly onto the white-painted bars that kept her in there like a zoo creature on display.

"I'm bigger than you," I whispered, as though that statement of obvious fact would make her disappear in a cloud of pink baby powder. If only I knew a wizard, I thought. Then I would be able to remedy this little sister issue. My thinking in those days oftentimes drifted beyond the stern limits of this world and into the realm of fantasy, where I was, naturally, a knight who had a host of friends with magical powers and otherworldly abilities. Were one to analyze this, they might find it telling that I always chose to be the knight and never the prince.

Her cherub lips puckered and opened to form a small 'o.' I imagined she was dreaming about eating from my mother, draining away her love for me and hoarding it for herself. The thought made me even more revolted. When my mother was pregnant, she had explained to me that I would soon have a sibling but that I would still get "lots of love and attention," something she'd no doubt paraphrased from one of her dozens of maternity books. I'd readily accepted the idea of having a new baby in the house. The way my mother made it sound, we'd grow to be the best of companions, and I'd still be her special boy, no matter what. But as soon as I heard that first cry, that terrible shriek that set the whole house on alert, I learned the shocking, bitter truth of what it meant to have a new baby in the house.

I could hear my mother's long, confident steps as she walked down the hallway, no doubt coming to check on the baby. Again. Like the envious snot I was, I doubted that I got checked on half as much when I was three weeks old. I cast one more baleful look at my sister and sneaked out, quiet as a mouse, narrowly averting an interrogation.

My jealousy remained stubbornly steadfast until one day, nearly a month later, when my father called me into the baby's room. He was sitting cross-legged on the floor with Relena in his arms, gently bouncing her. Her blue eyes were transfixed on his face, and her little fingers tangled in his beard. It was disorienting to see him like that, for he was always "up" to me. Always in a higher chair when we sat. Always towering over me when we walked. Sitting on the floor, he was, no doubt purposefully, on my level. He saw me in the doorway and smiled.

"Come over here and have a seat, son."

After a moment's hesitation, I crossed the nursery, careful not to drag my feet and make my distaste evident. I took a seat on the floor across from him and we sat in silence for a while. We were both looking at the baby, but I was more looking _through_ her than _at _her. I might have been plotting. I did that sometimes, though I never enacted any of my wicked ideas. I merely stored them in a dark part of my brain that would have made my parents shudder if they could have seen it.

Father looked up then and sensed in his omniscient paternal way that my mind was somewhere else. "What are you thinking about?" he asked, his tone concerned. My father consistently treated me like an equal, even though, as a four-year-old child, I was clearly not. Obvious exception to this treatment was when he was spanking me for being a brat or for running off without telling anybody where I was going. Even then, he made certain afterwards that I understood exactly why I had been punished, a fairly typical rationalization parents use when hitting their children.

I almost said something but stopped myself, though not soon enough to avoid making a small sound that died behind my teeth. I started picking at my sock, tearing off those teeny tiny little balls that form when washed so many times – a nervous habit I'd adopted some time that year. My nonnie hated it because she was sick of finding pickings and holy socks stashed in various corners of the house, hidden evidence of my secret anxiety.

My father waited almost a minute to see if I would confess what he undoubtedly already knew: that I hated my sister and wished she had never been born. When I refused to speak, I expected him to give a disappointed sigh and go into a pedantic about the virtues of honesty. Instead, he only nodded.

"Hold out your arms, palms up."

Like the mostly obedient child I was, I did just that. Imagine my surprise when he stretched out his long, strong arms and carefully handed the baby over to me.

"Make sure you support her head – try using your elbow…yes, like that. Just like that."

I think "overwhelmed" would best describe how I felt about the amount of trust that had literally been given over to me. If there was one thing I learned since Relena was born, it was that babies are very delicate things that are not to be handled in just any fashion by just anybody. That I had been chosen as one of the trusted bearers of Princess Relena Peacecraft was an honor, a fact that I kept close at heart long after she'd ceased being an infant.

She was heavy, so I let the bulk of her weight rest on my lap while I cradled her head in the crook of my arm. She was very warm and limp, like giant hot water bottle. She whimpered at first, but grew steadily sleepier with each passing moment in my charge. Holding her for the first time, I realized that I'd never truly looked at her with vision unclouded by the negativity I assigned to her so early on. She really was beautiful; I could finally see what my parents were always talking about. I think I would have been content to sit there all day with her, to watch her fall asleep and stir every now and again. She was so tiny. Helpless. Her limp smallness made me want to hold her tight and scowl at anybody who came too close.

"I don't know if you realize this or not, Milliardo," my father said in a hushed voice, "but you have taken on a new and very important role. Do you know what that role is?"

At that age, I only had a vague sense of who I was and what I was meant to one day become. At that time, my parents studiously avoided any talk of my having to rule the country of Sanc like Father did – whatever that meant. I did know that there was a certain flavor of ceremony that surrounded me. Adults bowed in my presence, Pagan and everybody except my parents and Nonnie called me "Your Highness" or "Your Grace" and addressed me to others as "the prince." Of course, I thought these things were all quite normal until the age when my parents began inviting other children to play with me. Only then did I have a concept that I was different, maybe even better than them.

Concerning my father's question, I looked up at him and shook my head.

"You are Relena's big brother. Big brothers are some of the most important people in this world. They are the protectors and role models of their younger siblings."

He had a sober look in his eye, one that told me that this was not some sort of made-up role like "Mama's Special Helper" or "Nonnie's Bravest Spider Killer" (I never actually killed them – I just caught them and let them crawl out the nearest door or window).

"Relena will need you to watch over her, from now until maybe forever. Will you be willing to take on that responsibility?" He paused for effect before delivering the crippling stroke: "Will you be your little sister's knight in shining armor?"

Oh, my father knew exactly what to say to pique my interest. All he had to do was mention something as noble and medieval as a knight in shining armor and I was immediately hooked on the idea. In my head, I had this vivid image of me riding a white horse, with chainmail armor and a shield emblazoned with my family crest, oblivious to the irony of it all. I would have a magnificent sword with which I'd cut through my enemies like a warrior-beast. Oh, yes, Relena's Big Brother, gallant and fierce. I would rescue her from a castle dungeon and she would hug me and thank me for being such a wonderful guardian and protector…

"I'll do it," I said, brimming with heady confidence. I looked down at the baby in my arms and felt something quite the opposite of jealousy: pride. I was proud to be a big brother, proud to be a guardian and a role model. When my fantasies mixed with my father's coveted approval and my new, pleasant feelings towards Relena, I couldn't help but smile at how suddenly perfect the world was. I heard a 'click' and looked up to find my father holding up his digital camera. Like me, he also had a wide smile on his face.

"We'll definitely have to frame that one," he said.

xxx

My mouth was dreadfully dry. I lay there on my side, thinking about how much I wanted a drink of water. There was a full glass on the nightstand, but I couldn't convince my slothful hand to reach for it. It was maddening torture made exponentially worse by the fact that it was self-imposed. I glanced at the clock. In eight more hours, I could take another pill, which was sitting there next to that glass of water, waiting for me – practically smiling at me. _Wink. I know you want me_.

I had to do something. Lift arm, grasp glass, sit up just enough not to choke, and, if possible, replace. What could be simpler?

I watched twenty-two minutes slip away before I finally reached for it, and it was almost as difficult as I imagined it would be. As a reward to myself, I washed down my water with a little Tetracontin. Just a little early, nothing but a trifle…and then back, back, back to that place I loved to be…the warmth of a fire…the touch of my mother's hand….

xxx

My mother's craft room was enormous. It was her favorite place in the whole house, her haven from politics and propriety, where she sewed, knitted, upholstered, scrapbooked, painted, and I couldn't imagine what else. She was the Jack of All Crafts, possessing abilities both innate and honed. She had a giant, bedroom-sized walk-in closet filled with fabrics and ribbons and drawer upon drawer of thread, yarn, paper, and craft tools of all sorts. My father wasn't allowed entrance, nor was Pagan or any of the other palace staff. Those in the past who had tried, even with the best of intentions, earned the rare and questionable privilege of seeing my mother angry.

It was two days after my fifth birthday party, and the whole household had spent the entire time since the celebration fussing over my concussed head. It was mild, the doctor had told my parents. No need for concern. Of course, they concerned themselves anyway, watching me in shifts, offering me leftover birthday cake for breakfast, oh-so-gently smoothing my hair, as if my brain would fall right out if they touched me too hard. They'd kept me awake when I wanted to sleep and kept me indoors when I wanted to play outside. I'd had quite enough of it and said so rather bluntly that morning over a plate of blue icing masquerading as something more substantive than a giant sugar bomb. With a succession of "Sweetheart, are you sure?" and "Only if you feel one hundred percent better," they finally afforded me the personal space I oddly desired at such a young age.

At present, I was in the midst of a very serious engagement with the new construction set given to me by my mother, who had seen from an early age my talent for forging order and a creativity that lent itself less to artistic pursuits and more to problem-solving. Late that morning she came to my bedroom, where I sat surrounded by neatly organized piles of parts, the instruction and project-suggestion booklets spread across my lap. She startled me when she knocked on the door frame.

"Having fun?"

I, in fact, was not having fun. I was frustrated beyond belief at my inability to read at a higher level. The set had come with sample designs of bridges, buildings, and working mechanical contraptions, all of which I was dying to build as soon as humanly possible. I had plans. Big plans. But at that time, a combination of being five and having no prior experience with such toys was quickly dashing my dreams of being a master civil engineer.

"Yes," I said and cracked a false smile, not wanting my mother to know what a dolt her son was.

Mother leaned against the door jamb and crossed her arms over her chest. She was dressed in khaki slacks and a fitted, white, button-down shirt. Her golden hair was in a ponytail, and she let her bangs fall fashionably in her face instead of brushing them aside like she did for parties. This was her typical casual fare, and she wore it exceptionally well. Though she never would have admitted to such a description, she was something of a tomboy, not at all unlike Noin. She could don a gown and outshine every woman in the room with her beauty, composure, and grace, but she preferred slacks to skirts, straddle to side-saddle, and liquor to liqueur.

"I know you just got your construction set, and I'm certain you are enjoying yourself tremendously, but I'm going to my room to do some knitting and I wouldn't mind some company," she said, a small smile on her lips. My mother was the paragon of level-headedness. She never raised her voice and never panicked, and not because she was naive or uninitiated into high-stress environments. At times in my adolescence and adulthood when I felt wielded by my passions and temper, I thought of my mother's face, her perpetual half-smile, her level gaze. I tried to imitate it, even though I knew I had no right to do so. She never would have approved of the man I've become.

My agitated mind appraised the situation: continue this embarrassing struggle with beams and bolts or take up a rare invitation from my mother? It wasn't that my mother didn't spend time with me – quite the opposite. She didn't do much in the way of political work, and aside from fulfilling her special philanthropic roles, she rarely left the palace grounds. She proudly considered herself a housewife and full time mother. I typically enjoyed being left to my own devices, a fact she respected, but she made it a point to connect seriously with me at least once a day, if not more. Sometimes we played games or watched a movie together. Other times, when the weather was fair, we would tend to the flowers or vegetables in one of the palace's many gardens or go for a walk through the nearby forest. We also spent a good deal of time with Relena, which wasn't entirely horrible. She was entertaining at that age, and she thought I was the funniest person in the universe. I could make her laugh her little head off just by holding her stuffed duckie up to her face and making quacking noises.

But time in my mother's craft room was different from our usual time together. Asking me to join her was like asking the devil to attend Christmas Mass; it just didn't happen. It may very well have been post-concussive guilt she felt for not stopping me from climbing a tree in the dead of winter, but that fact notwithstanding, how could I not accept?

"Do I have to put this away now, or can I wait 'til later?" I asked, as though my answer to her invitation would depend on whether or not she let me be lazy.

She tilted her head to the side thoughtfully. "Well, I suppose it can wait, but just this once. I don't want you to start getting sloppy like your father."

My father wasn't a slob, but he had a habit of leaving things out. Whenever my mother asked him why his desk was covered with file folders, he told her it was because he was just setting them aside for a little while – but he was still working on them! Honestly. One time she secretly catalogued all of the things on my father's desk, updating the roster every week when he was away at parliamentary meetings. One of the files, detailing a district revitalization project that had ended months prior, stayed in the same corner of his desk for over six months. My mother stopped tracking after a while, bored and resigned to his idiosyncrasies.

Having agreed on the terms of my visitation, we went straight to the inner sanctum of the craft room to pick out yarn.

"What color would you like to use? Blue?"

Though it was my favorite color at the time, I shook my head and pulled a sizable ball of vibrant red. "I want to use this one." It was a shocking shade of red, one that wasn't meant to be an item of usual clothing. Maybe a winter hat or some other accessory.

"Oh, my. A bold choice, young sir! I will pick…" she made a small sound of consideration as she traced her finger along the length of the drawer, "...lavender." She took the ball of yarn in her hand and held it up against my shoulder. "I think I'm going to make you a new jumper."

She must have seen the fear quite plainly in my eyes, because she started laughing.

"Honestly, Milliardo, what sort of mother do you think I am? I know you hate the color. I'm going to make a blanket for your sister. I think she likes it."

Mother pulled two overstuffed chairs close together near the window. Outside, the grounds were covered in snow, and a chill was creeping in. I helped her start a fire, telling her that I had seen it done enough that I could probably do it on my own next time. At this point, I'm sure she mentally noted never to leave me unattended near a fireplace.

She taught me how to finger knit, which she assured me was so simple that Relena could do it. Technically, yes, it was a simple concept. Realistically, it was almost as big of a nightmare as my construction set. I was trying to make a scarf for my father, but so far it was looking like a heap of bloody intestines. I grunted and unraveled the whole thing.

My mother watched me struggle as she effortlessly knitted a long and professional-looking blanket for Relena. "Honey, that's the third time you've started over. It doesn't have to be perfect," she said, her voice soft and limitlessly patient. "You just need practice, that's all. Everybody needs practice to be good at something."

I felt that I should be exempt from this obvious fact. Not being good – no, not being the best – singed my fledgling pride. In my mind, if I wasn't the best, I might as well be the worst. Of course, it didn't help that I had pathetically few peers to compare myself to, so I measured my skills against the adults in my life: Mother, Father, Nonnie and Pagan. More often than not, such unrealistic comparisons led to deep disappointment and vehement wishes for faculties well beyond what could be realistically expected for my age.

I huffed and crushed the yarn in my fists as if punishing it for getting the best of me. "Can I try this again later?"

My mother gazed over at me and smiled in that smooth, mild way of hers. "I'll tell you what – next time you want to work on it, you let me know. You can come back and try again."

"Okay," I replied, remorseful over succumbing to temporary defeat because of my ineptitude. I rolled the yarn back into a neat ball and put it back in the closet. As I walked towards the door, Mother stopped me.

"Hey," she called, twisting around in her chair to face me, "maybe you can convince Nonnie to go outside with you. I think the snow should be perfect for snowmen."

I pursed my lips as I considered this most seductive suggestion. I loved being outside no matter what season, but I especially liked playing in the snow, pretending that I was exploring the new, uncharted territories of the North or South Pole (not that there were any uncharted territories left on Earth). It was unfortunate that, despite growing up in the wildly extreme weather of Sanc, my mother hated the cold. She would have made an excellent snowy day companion.

I found Nonnie in her room, where she was hunched over her desk with a book and her notebook computer, reading and typing. She was a student of everything she could get her hands on, one of those rare people who love learning only for the sake of it and not to impress anybody else. She had an insatiable appetite for the literatures of many nations, and considered it her personal mission to turn me into every bit the voracious reader she was. Nonnie was a very recent university graduate - the daughter of my father's friend - when she came to be my temporary nanny after my last one had a paralyzing stroke when I was two. My parents tried to take her away from me and replace her with somebody with the credentials to help raise the future king of Sanc, but my incessant crying and begging for Nonnie's return compelled them to have a change of heart.

And I was glad. I loved my nonnie as much as I loved my parents. Relena had her own nonnie. My nonnie was mine alone.

"What's on the menu today, Captain?" she asked when she saw me at the door.

We'd recently finished reading a book about Captain Wellesley, the seafaring adventurer who loved to discover strange new races and cultures and subvert them. He was no man to idolize, Nonnie told me, but there was something distinctly appealing about heading out on the ocean on a ship with nothing but the wind and the capricious sea.

"I think we should explore the frozen North today," I told her, walking to the window to survey our prospects. The winterscape was idyllic, so crisply white and clean. The coniferous trees of the forest held the snow nobly, as if protecting their smaller leafless cousins from a weight they were too cold and weak to bear.

"I take it you mean that literally and not in the sense of sitting by a warm fire and just reading about it."

I frowned as I grasped fruitlessly for the definition of the key word in that sentence. "I don't know – what does 'literally' mean?"

She closed her book and computer and looked over at me. She had short, dark brown hair and sharp cheekbones. There was a perfectly-placed beauty mark just above one corner of her mouth that compensated for the plainness of her other features. She wore glasses at one point, but my parents bought her laser surgery for her twenty-third birthday.

Nonnie paused, thinking, trying to figure out the best way to explain it to me. "It means actually or truly as opposed to something non-actual. Like if somebody is literally going crazy, their brain is actually changing in a way that's making them insane. Where as if somebody is just very stressed out and says 'I'm going crazy,' that's non-literal. A figure of speech. They're just stressed, not insane. Or so they think."

I let her words permeate my mind, making what little sense of them I could. Sometimes she lacked the ability to simplify things enough for me to understand them, which, of course, I turned back on myself as a testament to my stupidity.

"I would literally like to go outside and play in the snow," I stated clearly, still unraveling her definition but fairly certain that I'd used the word properly.

She smiled in acknowledgment. "Fine, but we have to have hot chocolate when we get back."

As though I would argue with that.

Downstairs, she was bundling me up when Father passed us in the hall.

"Goodness, Heike, you can barely see him under all of that. He'll overheat the minute he gets going out there." Father's tone was light, but there was definite criticism there. I now know that there's a word for this sort of behavior that he so often exhibited: passive-aggressive.

Heike – Nonnie's real name – pulled a woolen hat over my head unapologetically. She was entirely unmoved by my father's disapproval, having been raised by a man who was remarkably similar in every way except social stature. I'm sure that's why the two men were friends. "I'm certain that he will be fine, Your Highness."

"Sometimes you worry too much, I think. Just remember, no hide-and-seek – and no climbing trees, of course." He looked down at me and his face brightened. One of his large hands patted me gently on the head. "Have fun!"

"We will!" I said, my voice muffled by a thick scarf.

With that, he walked away, no doubt off to work. He was a certifiable workaholic, which is the reason why his desk was so messy. He was no lay-about monarch, much to the chagrin of the parliament, which preferred to govern the country without his legislative intervention. He did so much crucial policy work for the country that one couldn't seriously chastise him for his disorganization.

"Sometimes you don't worry enough," Nonnie muttered. And then to me, "You heard that. No hide-and-seek, so don't even ask."

"Why?" I was sure that I knew the answer, but delighted in having it explained to me repeatedly. I'm not sure why I liked hearing about my multiple infractions of the rules, but I think it had something to do with the typical juvenile belief that I was right and everybody else was wrong.

"Why?" she repeated, straightening her own wool hat – made by Mother, of course. "You know why. I don't know how you do it, but somehow you manage to slink off the property whenever an adult's back is turned. I'm not going to court your father's wrath…."

xxx

"I'm going to die," I mumbled as I sat on the edge of the bed, contemplating a quickly depleting supply of drugs. I thought this even as I was shaking pills into my hand. Yes, pills. Plural.

Very few people believe that they're actually going to die. Most people flat-out refuse it and hold onto some silly hope, an expectation that a last minute appeal to some higher power or fate will be answered. These people expect that they'll pull back a curtain and see there's just a figment there, manipulating, fear-mongering, and they'll come to the understanding that death is just a figment of that nasty figment. A joke. Ha-ha! You almost fell for it. Don't tell anybody.

For those few who think they can accept death, it's only by way of bargain or caveat. Yes, there's death, but then there's some magical afterlife filled with dead pets and virgins and chocolate waterfalls. And that flip-side? That fiery lake of burning sulfur thing? There's usually a way to weasel out of that.

Who believes in death as a terminal point? A finality? A null set? It's a bleak and terrifying notion, which means, of course, that it's the belief I subscribed to.

There was a prominent part of me that didn't care about overdosing. Whispers from the back of my brain told me that my life was already atrociously inappropriate, directionless, and generally pointless. This part waged battle with another that insisted that I stay alive and suffer for Everything. "Everything" was a nebulous, all-encompassing term that encapsulated all the wrongs and losses that I couldn't bear to face individually. Everything was a black, looming mass of shame, grief, and guilt that pressed against my forehead from the inside, threatening to burst, threatening to destroy me. That was the sensation that I was killing with Tetracontin.

I'd ignored my deeds. I'd ignored my thoughts. I'd ignored Him most of all, with greatest skill, with perfect and stalwart dedication. Every time a thought of him tried to creep into my mind, I choked it. Choked down a pill. Choked down some water. And just like that, the thought collapsed and faded, like a blossom that failed to open, choked by the lack of sunshine.

I knew it was almost over, that I'd soon run out of meds, but like most addicts, I couldn't stop. I wouldn't stop. I _refused_ to stop. This pathetic excuse for a life was no more terrible than I deserved. And when this nightmare was over, there would only be another one waiting, like a beast, snarling in the darkness, mouth frothing in anticipation of my fall. I would be consumed by the Everything that I'd been putting off for all those months, the Everything of everything before Christmas of 195.

Nightmare after nightmare after nightmare.

That seemed to be the sum of my life.

All I could do was suck the marrow out of each and every beautiful dream until there was nothing left to taste but misery. By the grace of opium in an easy-to-swallow pill form, I lived like a dying man, savoring each moment of sweet denial like a last breath of oxygen. Grim reality was the reaper in waiting at the foot of my bed, watching me, patient as my mother.

_I'm almost ready, you son of a bitch. Just a little more time…_


	4. Better Than Anything

Title: Limbo  
Chapter: 4/12: Better Than Anything  
Pairing: Past Treize/Zechs (made present-tense via flashbacks)  
Spoliers: Series, EW  
Warnings: Death themes, intoxication, male/male sexual situations, foul language, grief, angst, cynicism, debatable instances of sap. Flashbacks throughout. Little kid-ness (bear with me). Rated M for swears and dark matter.  
Disclaimer: I don't own any part of GW. No monies have been or will be made off of this thing.

Please see Limbo 1 for very important notes.

Thanks to all who have taken the time to review!

I hope you enjoy.

xxx

Limbo 4: Better Than Anything

Panic.

In my entire life, from my anxious childhood to my countless life-threatening missions as a soldier, I had never known panic like this. Not even when my house was on fire and my parents were dead and I had no air in my lungs just smoke and it was thick and terrible and I couldn't find Nonnie just men with guns….

This was not the same.

This, this spine-seizing, skin-chilling, stomach-twisting panic, was in an entirely different class of its own. It wasn't the panic of sudden confusion or the panic of being late for something important. It was instead the panic right before a shard of wood is driven under a fingernail or the panic when a parachute fails to open. It was mortal panic, the panic of impending doom.

I had taken my last Tetracontin the day before and, like an idiot, I expected that I would find more if I only looked hard enough. The search began calmly, as little more than a brief glance around each room. White pill in here? No. Perhaps in the next room, then? It was a search that was polite and gentlemanly, restrained and optimistic. When a cursory sweep yielded nothing, I willed myself to focus, determined not to overreact.

But the ruse was pitifully short-lived. After my third time in each room, I felt the first twinges of needle-pointed disquiet creeping in from beyond the borders of self-control. In my bedroom, the place I slothfully bided most of my time, I knelt on the bed, running my fingers through every fold of bedding, looking for pills that I might have dropped in my altered state in the months prior.

Nothing.

Then I thought that maybe I'd miscounted the number of containers that I'd received on MO-VIII. It was entirely possible, I convinced myself, that the doctor had given me five and not four. That would have been a reasonable mistake to make, right? Absolutely, I told myself. So I emptied out the remaining contents of the bag that I hadn't even completely unpacked since arriving in France. I smiled when I heard the shaking of pills in a bottle and congratulated myself for remaining civil the entire time, but as I sifted through my things it turned out only to be B-12 vitamins that Gosney had insisted I take. I swore aloud as I dumped all the vitamins out on the bed and picked through them, looking for a hint of white in the sea of yellow.

Nothing.

I checked the drawers in my nightstand – one could have fallen in there – and then in the bathroom – maybe behind the faucet! And then I crawled on the floor around my room, shoving aside furniture and reaching my long and scrawny arm under the bed, sweeping my hand back and forth, listening for the tiny staccato rolling sound of a pill on hardwood.

Nothing. Not a single thing.

I was electrified by an immense amount of nervous energy. After months of lying blessedly prostrate, this overwhelming restlessness was nothing short of miraculous. I paced, my thoughts racing as I impotently attempted to retrace my every movement since I'd arrived. If I even thought it within the realm of possibility that I dropped a pill in a certain place, I would search it twice, maybe even three times.

It was all-consuming, burning me up as the goose bumps rose on my skin. It was hours and hours before I admitted to myself that I'd searched every conceivable corner of the house and that it would be a waste of time to look anymore. Shaking, I ran my hands through my tangled hair and mumbled to myself that I had to focus, focus, game plan, focus, focus. I forced myself to eat some bread, thinking that it might have been low blood sugar contributing to the tremors that rattled my fingers. Though I knew that the bread was fresh and of typically excellent French quality, I found the food tasteless and a little sickening.

I flopped down on the chair in the sitting room and watched my left leg shake uncontrollably. I tried to pull myself together, tried to think about what – if anything – I could do next. I knew that somewhere inside me lurked a talented individual capable of assessing and planning, but I had denied him so long that I couldn't access that caliber of skill.

I looked out the window. The sun was out for the moment, soon to be eclipsed by a cumulous cloud. My eyes tracked the dirt road that led from my house to Mr. Kazlauskas'. I wondered how far it was – probably no more than a kilometer. I could walk it…

Yes, I could walk it. There was a fair chance that the old man wouldn't be there. Hadn't I heard his truck drive off earlier? Old people always have something in their medicine cabinets, and the man was probably suffering from dementia, I told myself, and wouldn't notice a few missing pills - just one or two more was all I needed! Then I'd be ready to stop, yes, that was completely true because I was a man with discipline and character who just needed a little something and then that would be it maybe just one more just one would be perfectly enough because then I would be ready to kick it for good and just one maybe two or three for good measure just to make sure I was prepared....

I shook my head violently, as though I could shake that horrible train of thought right out of my skull. What the hell was I thinking, stealing medication from an old man I barely knew? It was preposterous, and, what's more, disgusting. I was a prince, for God's sake – a self-hating, piece of garbage prince who wasn't worth the blue blood in his veins, but a prince no less. No, no, no. I wouldn't go that far.

But after so much time spent alternating between pacing and slouching in that chair, fidgeting and nervous, I concluded that yes, I would - no, I _had_ to - go that far. I just had to. I had been staggering clumsily between self-restraint and reckless abandon for countless hours on end, and I'd reached my breaking point. Like the thunderclap-loud ticking of the clock on the wall, the idea of raiding the old man's house bore itself into my brain bit by bit. It went from an abominable option to an inescapable inevitability. I rose from my chair, put on my sunglasses, and stepped outside for the first time in months.

Though I'm certain that the weather and scenery were brilliant and beautiful, they weren't even a thought in my mind as I walked that dirt road. I saw nothing but the house ahead and the brimming medicine cabinet I pictured in my mind's eye. I became nearly giddy when I saw that the man's pickup truck was gone, and I quickened my pace to a sloppy jog and didn't stop until I was on his porch.

The door wasn't even locked. I couldn't believe my good luck! I am unspeakably ashamed to admit that I probably would have put my fist through the window and reached around to unlock the deadbolts in a pinch. That's the kind of fucking mess I was.

I threw the door open dramatically, like they do on TV, and immediately climbed the stairs, figuring correctly that the master bed and bath would be there. I passed two rooms in the hall which I foggily registered as a guest room and an office. I hit the jackpot one door down from there and made short work of rummaging through the man's medicine cabinet.

Vitamins. Vitamins. Vitamins. Every single damn bottle in the entire cabinet was filled with vitamins. I turned each one frantically, scanning the label. A. B. C. D. E. Fish oil. K. Multi. Selenium. There wasn't one prescription medication in there, if anyone could believe it. Panicked once more, I shut the cabinet and made the fortunate mistake of catching a glimpse of my face in the mirror. A man I barely recognized stared back at me, one with hollowed cheeks and eyes a cold and deadened blue. I stared at myself, incredulous – not only at my appearance, but at what I'd caught myself doing.

For a long moment, I was completely sober. I saw with absolute clarity how shameful my behavior was, and in that moment I realized that I'd become a common addict, no better than a vagrant heroin junkie. It didn't matter why I was doing it; no amount of self-recrimination could possibly justify this.

With calm that I'd not been capable of mustering for days, I stepped back from the cabinet, slid the door closed, and walked out of the bathroom. In the hallway, men, women, and children from another time watched me from behind their glass frames, their stares nonjudgmental, unconcerned with my sins. The sight of a computer in the office caught my eye and I stopped at the doorway. A question that'd been eating at my guts since I woke up in space announced its presence and my stomach turned.

I took a step into the room and forced myself to stop once more. Did I really want to know? Did I deserve to know, and would knowing make any difference? But then, could I walk away from such a perfect opportunity _without_ knowing? At least if I found out, this excursion would be more than simply a whacked-out malefactor's attempt to score more drugs.

The monitor was on, system logged in. It was the perfect setup. I took a step, then another, until I reached the desk and sat. I opened up a web channel and typed –

Treize Khushrenada.

…Treize Khushrenada (September 9, 171 – December 24, 195 AC) served as Supreme Commander of World Nation forces in the Eve War of 195. Founder and member of the Specials branch of the Organization of the Zodiac, he was the youngest soldier in the current era to be promoted to the rank of General. General Khushrenada was also a key member of the Romefeller Foundation and a prominent figure in Russian aristocracy. He graduated valedictorian from Lake Victoria Military Academy in 187 and continued his distinguished military career until he was killed in action on Christmas Eve of 195…

No, no, no. Out of date. It had to be. Somebody must have found him, just like the found me. I tried another one –

…Germany – Thousands of mourners gathered yesterday at the Dorum-Neufeld Cemetery to remember General Treize Khushrenada, one of the tens of thousands of soldiers who lost their lives in combat in the Eve War of 195…The reactor of Khushrenada's mobile suit was critically damaged by Gundam 05, resulting in a fatal explosion...He is survived by an extended family consisting of…

There was absolutely no way that either of those articles could be correct. No way in hell. They had to be…old or just…plain wrong, so I checked more –

…Treize Khushrenada (171-195 AC)….

…Treize Khushrenada, Sovereign of the World Nation, was killed in action….

And more –

…crowd of people gathered in Moscow's Red Square to mourn the loss of Treize Khushrenada…

…A significant portion of Duke Khushrenada's money was willed to the Sancian Reconstruction Fund….

I lifted a shaking hand to the computer's monitor and shut it off. I then stood, pushed the chair back into the desk, and left the office. I walked down the stairs and exited the way I came.

I walked. The sun was blotted out by dark nimbus clouds and the light was growing dimmer by the minute. Not a single thought ran through my head as I made my way towards my rental, like somebody had disconnected my higher cognitive functioning from my cerebellum. A few enormously heavy drops of rain thudded as they hit the ground and the roof of the house I lived in. One smacked against my sallow face and trickled down my cheek, off my chin.

I had left the door to my house wide open on my way out. I threw my arm behind me to close it when I returned. Inside was the stale, wretched stink of pathetic isolation. As I stood in the sitting room, dark blotches colored my vision and my head began spinning and I was suddenly so hot that...oh, God...

I made it to the bathroom just in time to puke my guts out.

I spend that night and the next day on the bathroom floor in agony. Every part of me felt like it had been pulverized by a mace, every bone broken, every inch of skin punctured. My insides burned as if my organs were tearing themselves apart. I shook violently, uncontrollably; I sweat so much that my shirt was soaked through. And I was weak – so weak that I could only move enough to retch unproductively over the toilet and collapse back against the floor tiles.

Desperate to get any relief at all, I crawled into the shower and turned it on cold, not even bothering to undress. I did feel a bit better then, but only by the infinitesimally smallest of measures. I don't know how long I stayed in there, but at some point I turned the water off, pulled myself into a standing position, and stripped off my wet clothing. I threw everything in a messy pile in the shower and staggered to the dresser.

I was back to freezing, another wave of cold sweat already permeating my skin, so I pulled on a pair of sweat pants and that bulky black sweatshirt and burrowed myself into the warmth of my bed. I was indescribably uncomfortable and nauseated to the point of contemplating a return to the bathroom, but I mustered the will to not vomit up the little bit of water I'd swallowed in the shower.

I was absolutely exhausted, and even though I lay there in perfect stillness, I couldn't fall asleep. It seemed that my body was resolutely fixed on my experiencing every moment of this misery, which was as much as I expected and deserved. Like the magnificent thing it was, my brain experimented with ways to tune it out. At one point, it planted a high-pitched ringing in my ear, which distracted me sufficiently until a few minutes later when it faded into the background of my aching muscles. Then another round of dry heaving over the garbage can next to my bed made me at least forget the pain for a while…

And a few hours later, as the day's first light peeked through a gap in the curtains, there was a strange tightness in my throat…no, it was more _around_ my throat – like a noose – or was it a neck tie? Yes, I think it was…in my new favorite color…just a little too tight for comfort, like what a gentleman wears to an important meeting…Oh, I could feel it, that constant pressure that keeps lightness in check. I immersed myself in the sensation, which became a memory of important meetings – maybe the most important meeting of my life…

xxx

"You look so handsome," Mother said, her long fingers tying my bowtie in front of the full-length mirror in my room.

Like most six-year-olds, I had very little comprehension of what constituted physical attractiveness. The only thing such an expression meant to me was praise from my mother, one of the most valuable currencies in the world. At that time, I was no different from any little boy in that I adored my mother; I was, however, somewhat different in that I pretended that I didn't.

"I told you that Irina is bringing her son, didn't I? He's a little bit older than you are, but I think you'll like him." How was it that my mother always seemed to know exactly when my tie was just tight enough to remind me of its presence but just loose enough for me to breathe and swallow comfortably? "From what Irina said, he enjoys the same things you do." Irina was one of Mother's best friends from her boarding school days in Belgium. I had never met her before.

"How old is he?" I asked, ghosting my fingers over my mother's and trying to get a feel of how to tie the thing myself. I knew she took some silly pleasure in doing it for me, so I exercised enough tact to not ask her for an official lesson. I was completely fooling myself by believing her fawning to be a nuisance. As much as I pretended to be grown-up, I could never get enough of the touch of her hand in my hair, on my shoulder, in my own hand...

"He just turned eleven this month."

I purposefully filtered my excitement, just like my etiquette instructor suggested. In retrospect, this was one of the more damaging phases in my life, a serious time for an aristocratic child where habits that would supposedly make or break one's social future were introduced and enforced. I was already reserved by nature, and some would say that, as the training took root, I went from serious to grave. Obviously, these people had never seen me fence or explore the beauty of the nearby forest or discuss a book that I loved. I decided to let them keep their assumptions. They were only to my advantage anyway.

"I look forward to meeting him," I said, my tone subdued. That was the name of my game.

Mother smiled down at me, undoubtedly hopeful that perhaps I would meet at least one child that I got along with. I wasn't shy about expressing my distaste for the children I was forced to play with, many of whom I thought conducted themselves like oafish, untrained animals. On the occasion that they were boys, they would do insane things like grab my model cars off of my dresser and smash them together with a _bwo-o-o-oshhhhh_! or a _kwa-a-a-ashhhh_! sound effect that made my teeth hurt. When my playmates were girls, they were barely worth my time and thought quite the same about me, far more concerned with how cute Relena was and what dolls she had.

"His name is Treize and his title is Count. Their family name is Khushrenada. You will address his mother as Duchess, unless she tells you otherwise."

My tongue tripped over the boy's name and Mother corrected my pronunciation.

"Treize Khushrenada. Is that better?"

"Yes, that's perfect." She stood and walked to the closet to get the blue coat that went with my short pants. She had resigned herself to letting me wear the things after calculating that I barely got three wears out of a pair of regular slacks before they were officially too short. 'You grow like those weeds in the Annex,' she'd said. "Your father will join us for a cup of tea and then you and Treize can go off on your own for a few hours while Irina and I catch up. You will be okay with that, won't you?"

I slid my arms into the sleeves of the coat as she held it up for me. Then I stepped forward, just enough to let her know that I wanted to take it from there. I buttoned each of my three buttons and pulled up my socks. "We'll be fine, Mother," I reassured.

She looked at my reflection in the mirror once more – so beautiful in her understated way – and muttered something I couldn't understand in the dying local dialect of her home province. By the way she was smiling at me, I knew that it was something good. I afforded a small smile in return and she took my hand to lead me downstairs, where we met our guests in the receiving room before moving to a well-lit sitting room with a glorious view of the palace grounds.

Navigating social situations was never my forte. I loathed the trappings of peerage and procedure, which were oftentimes so overbearing that they made substantive relationships nearly impossible to form. Most aristocrats were always consumed to distraction with whether they were using the correct mode of address, whether they were eating or drinking at the correct pace, or whether they'd worn a color that was prominent enough to be noted but never so vibrant as to outshine a superior. What made the Khushrenadas exceptional from the onset was that they were unusually at ease in their own nobility, holding their distinguished positions effortlessly while at the same time paying due respect to Mother and me without an ounce of strain.

The women began by chatting about the spectacular fall weather and about Treize's recent birthday, more concerned with their long unattended relationship than with entertaining either of us. Irina would pause and occasionally divert attention to me, coaxing me to talk, giving her son a chance to get a feel for me without returning the favor of revealing any information about him. He appeared fully engaged with our conversation, no doubt taking diligent mental notes. As I conversed with Irina on comfortable subjects like my studies and hobbies, I sneaked furtive glances at the boy's neutral expression, nurturing a quiet envy of the way that he neither looked particularly impressed nor particularly unimpressed. Pleasant poker face. I wanted that.

A short time later, I was saved from further unwilling divulgence by the arrival of my father, which was an event unto itself. He was not fond of formalities, but he recognized the importance of being treated like the king he was, which meant an abundance of procedure no matter what he did. Immediately following, a staff member came in with tea for everybody and we got down to some serious improvisation. The conversation started lightly, but quickly barreled into a full-blown interrogation of Treize by my father. After all, he was just as concerned with the company I kept as I was.

"So, tell me, Treize, what sort of schooling have you had?" my father asked, resting his head against the high back of his chair. It was a classic power position that made him look tall, broad, and imposing - kingly, I suppose, which was pretty much the point.

Treize sat up so straight that I was sure my own neurotically self-controlled posture looked sloppy by comparison. And yet, he appeared quite settled and unencumbered in this state of rigidity, wearing it like an old coat that suited him perfectly. "Until present, I have been educated at home under the guidance of my mother and several tutors, Your Majesty," he said, his voice smooth and confident even under the intense scrutiny of my father. He had a faintly rolling accent which told me that English wasn't his first language, an area where I held an advantage since I'd been raised dually in Sancian and English to prepare me for a diplomatic future that I would never have.

"Oh? And are you considering entering a private institution at fourteen, or will you continue studying with your tutors?"

I knew my father well enough to be certain that he was looking for a specific answer from Treize, but I had no way of predicting what he wanted to hear. I studied his face, which was, of course, unreadable to me. I thought that somewhere in my maturation I would magically gain the ability to sense the inner workings of my father's mind, something that I would have committed criminal acts to have access to, but it seemed that he grew more mysterious with every passing year.

"Actually, Your Grace, I have already been accepted to several secondary academies for admission next fall."

My father's left eyebrow rose, a significant move of tentative approval, but one not without a proviso. "What academies?"

Treize leaned forward and placed his teacup on the table in front of him. I thought he was holding up quite well under the grilling, the only visible strain being an almost imperceptible exhalation of relief every time he shot a successful volley. "Bastogne, Saint Ludmilla, Alexandria, and Schaeffer-Eckstein have all offered me early admission, Your Highness."

Only as an adult can I understand just how accomplished Treize was to have been accepted into all of those institutions, which were universal top picks for every intellectual and aristocratic parent. His mother cast a sidelong glance at him, a small smile tugging at the corner of her mouth. She kept her pride on a tight leash. If I had a child even remotely as extraordinary, I'd smile a hell of a lot more than she ever did.

My father nodded. "Very impressive, young man, but tell me – do you think you will be…comfortable with your peers at that age?"

This was where Irina jumped in, her tone just shy of confrontational. "Treize is a highly gifted student. His tutors can scarcely keep up with his interests. And as for the social gap, it is slight, for as you can see, my son is quite capable of conducting himself admirably in the presence of those older than him."

My mother stifled a laugh behind her teacup and shot her friend a hasty look of apology for her husband's behavior.

"Oh, Duchess, please forgive me. I only wished to learn a bit more about your son. I suppose have a tendency towards forcefulness at times," he said, apologizing but clearly not sorry.

"It's quite all right, Your Highness. I'm enjoying our conversation," Treize reassured, then drank out of his cup in a way that was likely more urgent than he intended.

As I passively listened to a substantially more pleasant exchange between Irina and Father, I wondered where on Earth these people had come from. Mother said Russia, but I was inclined to think they hailed from another planet, where professional aristocrats are hatched from pods and groomed for absolute perfection from the moment they emerge. And, of course, fear had obviously been bred out of them generations ago.

"Perhaps we should let the boys go off by themselves," my mother suggested. "And you probably have to get back to work, don't you?" she hinted to Father.

"Oh, indeed," he said, the relief in his voice evident. "Well, Milliardo, why don't you take Treize up to your room? I'm sure you could find something fun to do there."

"Yes, Father."

We said our formal goodbyes – bowing and curtseying and bowing and curtseying some more – and I took Treize to my room like my father essentially ordered me to. Once there, I cringed as he was drawn immediately to the working drawbridge model that I'd made with my construction set.

"You must have worked very hard on this," he said, clasping his hands behind his back and leaning in to admire the intricacies of the piece. He turned back to face me, looking genuinely impressed. "It looks just like it does on the box!"

Of _course_ he had the same exact kit at home. I waited for him to touch it, to make some sort of ridiculous sound effect, or do anything else that characterized my previous guests, but instead he remained absolutely respectful of my personal property. I thought it remarkable that of all my possessions he could have admired, and of all the compliments he could have given me about that possession, that model and those words were the best he could have chosen. How did he always know exactly what to say? It was uncanny – and irritating. I wanted that, too.

"It wasn't that hard, really," I lied.

Treize looked at me with a small, comfortable smile on his lips, as though he held court with royalty every day of his life. His hair threw off fantastically copper overtones in the light of the sun streaming through my window, and his deep blue eyes held a glimmer of unshakable self-assurance that knocked me off center. He was nothing like the other boys I'd met, who'd gleefully despised me or pandered shamelessly or collapsed in on themselves every time I looked at them.

In an instant, I was overwhelmed by a desire to do or show something amazing, something that he couldn't top with his perfect posture and perfect words and perfect coat that fit his tall, thin frame perfectly. He had awakened my competitive streak, and I felt a pressing need to one-up him, big time. Being a prince clearly wasn't enough in itself. With his impeccable poise, boyish good looks, and unflagging confidence, he very well may have made a better prince than I did, and that intimidated me. I showed him a couple of the more mundane things in my room – my book collection ("Impressive") and my telescope ("My father bought me the same one") – and decided that he'd seen enough.

"We shouldn't waste our afternoon inside," I said, moving towards the door. "Would you like to get some fresh air?" The dialogue in my head, a translation of what I'd spoken, ran more along the lines of 'We're going outside right now and I don't give a toss whether you like it or not.'

He smiled and strode smoothly to my side. "Lead on, Your Majesty."

When we returned to the sitting room, Treize's mother was holding Relena and mentioning something about how she would love to have a little girl, a comment that made Treize's curiously bifurcated eyebrows gather. I interrupted them successfully and told Mother that I intended to give my guest a tour of the gardens. She frowned apprehensively as she considered it, until Irina whispered something about "being fine with Treize." Mother then gave me a long, serious look that implicitly begged me to not embarrass her and reluctantly gave her permission.

Outdoors, we walked alongside the palace, past the rose garden and into iris country, where Pagan was tending the plants. He wasn't just a butler – he dabbled in all areas of palace life. I think most days he would have rather been the full-time gardener, for I believe he secretly reveled in the quiet and fragrant loveliness of the grounds. And who didn't? Running into him was fortunate, for it gave me a chance to make my intentions known to a third party and to secure my alibi.

"Hello, Pagan," I greeted. "Have you been introduced to Count Treize Khushrenada?"

The man stood and tucked his gardening shovel into his apron. His smile was partially obscured by his bushy moustache. "Why, no, Your Grace, I haven't had the pleasure yet."

I introduced the two, and Treize, like the unearthly creature he was, pinned those irises as Pagan's favorites and complimented him on them. This made the man's eyes sparkle - another victim of the insidious Khushrenada charm.

"I'm taking Count Khushrenada to the Annex, in case Mother or Father wonders where we are. We may be there for some time."

"Well, I hope you young gentleman enjoy yourselves on this beautiful day," he replied. There's a strong chance that he suspected my actual plans, but he subscribed to the theory that children should be given a wide pasture to roam in, both figuratively and literally. "It was a pleasure meeting you, Count Khushrenada."

Treize bowed to the butler, something I found appallingly out of line – even if it was Pagan, who I liked very much. At that time, I was quite happily married to the letter of the law and not the spirit.

"The pleasure was all mine, Sir."

Treize always had an excellent sense of balance, which I later learned comes only from experience and deep self-reflection.

The man watched us closely as we walked towards the south end of the property. I could tell because I was repeatedly sneaking what were probably glaringly apparent glances over my shoulder.

"What's in the Annex?" Treize asked, leisurely taking in the beauty of the grounds as we strolled.

"Um, more plants. A gazebo. Nothing exciting."

"Then why are you taking me there?"

I glared up at him. He had a sly expression on his face, one that completely contrasted the fresh openness of his earlier social front. With his short, reddish hair and longish nose, he looked just as fox-like as his comment suggested he was.

"Does your mother trust you?" I asked, doing more indiscreet over-the-shoulder reconnaissance.

Treize paused slightly before he answered. "I've never given her a reason not to trust me."

Treize Khushrenada Lesson 101: Listen very, very carefully, for he almost always chooses his words precisely.

"We're not going to the Annex." I saw a crucial turn coming up. "At the end of this row of lilies, make a sharp right to get behind them. We're going to move along the wall. I think you're going to have to stay crouched so that our mothers don't see you from the sitting room."

He nodded and we proceeded as casually as possible until we reached the end of the lilies – casual meaning our childish interpretation of casual, which was a great and obvious exaggeration that included excessive arm swinging from Treize and an off-key whistled tune from me. We made our tactical turn and I scurried in front of him as we skirted along the generations-old brick wall. After a few meters, we reached the tarnished metal door that led to the outside world. There we crouched as I moved my special rock and used a stick to dig into the dirt to retrieve the key.

"Where did you get that?" he whispered.

"I saw the groundskeeper drop it one day." I was a terrifically naughty boy. A good boy would have given it back, but that key was literally my key to freedom.

I reached up and inserted it in the lock, turning it very conscientiously so that it made as little noise as possible. And then, slowly – over the course of an entire minute – I pushed the door open. It was rusty and loud if not coaxed just so, but I opened a wide enough gap for the two of us to slide through without creating a scene. We slipped free of the property and I closed the door behind us.

Outside the gate, we took a moment to absorb the magnificence of the forest that lay before us. It was an ancient wood, thick with coniferous and deciduous trees and lush undergrowth. The afternoon sun squeezed through the small, varied gaps between branches, giving the forest floor a mottled look that made the scenery look even more surreal. The forest was my sanctuary, the love of my life at that age.

"This might be one of the greenest forests I've ever seen," Treize said reverently, surveying the lay of the land and then looking back down at me with an unselfconscious grin. "I can see why you didn't return that key."

"Well," I said, unbuttoning my coat, "we all have our secrets, don't we?" I spoke with nonchalance, but in actuality I was thrilled to be in the woods, thrilled to be breaking the rules, and thrilled to be showing this strange alien boy my glorious country. "You'll want to take off your coat and tie. There's a bit of a walk ahead of us."

We draped our coats and ties over the cleanest-looking boulder we could find. The relief was immediate, for the white cotton of our dress shirts was far more appropriate for the weather than our coats had been. Treize unbuttoned the top two buttons of his shirt, revealing a coin-sized silver medallion that rested right below where the sharp ridges of his collarbones dipped at his sternum. I didn't find out what it was until a year or so later when he showed me up close: the Mother of God of Kazan, one of the holiest of icons in Russian Orthodoxy. It was an heirloom from his beloved and vehemently pious grandmother. He never believed in the religion and he never took off the medallion, preferring to think of its significance in secular terms of family tradition and, at times, good luck.

"Do you have any big secrets?" I asked indelicately as we started up the trail side-by-side, close enough to be more intimate that I was accustomed to but far away enough to preserve my cherished personal space. I was going for bust with this kid, taking out all of the stops that I reserved for less frustratingly enigmatic individuals. I figured incorrectly that there would never be enough time to politely get to know him, so I went for the bluntest instruments I had. It was a bold tactic, and one that didn't entirely fail.

"As you said, we all have them. I have some that are bigger than others, yes," Treize replied, completely sidestepping the essence of my question. His long legs, clad in slim-fitting, light grey pants and black knee-high boots, carried him smoothly and just a hair faster than I could move without additional effort.

"Like what?" I increased the length of my stride in order to keep up with him without looking like a mincing fool.

He smiled a little and his eyes moved up and to the right, as though trying to decide which of the multitudes of secrets would be the best to reveal. "Do you remember those academies I mentioned to your father? Well, I left one off the list. On purpose."

"Really? Why?"

"Because I haven't told my mother that I applied."

"What academy? And why wouldn't you tell your mother?" I asked, running my hand through the plants that lined the path.

"I was accepted to the military academy at Lake Victoria. I plan on going there. She already forbade it, but my father will help me convince her, I'm sure."

I frowned. "Why would you want to go to a military academy? So you can learn how to kill people?" I was young, but I was already quite well versed in sarcastic intonation, which seemed at the time a very mature way of conversing.

That comment earned Treize's full and enthusiastic attention. "Oh, no. I don't want to kill anybody. I really don't. It's only because I'm interested in computers and physics and engineering, and I know that the military has many opportunities for people with such interests."

"But why don't you go to a regular school and then go to graduate school and be a professor? My father is friends with the physics professor at the university in New Port and he does experiments all the time."

He nodded thoughtfully. "That is true, and I've certainly thought of doing that, but the military has a large budget and resources that you cannot find in the civilian world." He paused and his eyes narrowed. "Plus, haven't you ever seen a mobile suit on television and gotten this feeling of, how should I say it –"

"Fear?"

"Well, of course fear – that's rather the point of it – but I was going to say..." He paused and muttered something in Russian, his pleasant expression falling to one of intense concentration as he lapsed into thought. After a moment's struggle, the word "Exhilaration!" burst out with the brightness and gusto perfectly befitting it. "Whenever I see a mobile suit or a tank or a battle cruiser or fighter plane, I feel exhilarated, and all I want to do is get behind the controls. Haven't you ever felt that way?" He looked down at me, his expression open and hopeful, as though he were imploring me to find common ground with him - any at all.

I felt panic then, a surge of paranoia over the sure knowledge that he could read into a part of my mind that I kept carefully hidden from my parents and nonnie - one that was obsessed with anything that had an engine and moving parts, mobile suits most regrettably included. My days of knight and chainmail fantasies were over, replaced by dreams of speed and power. Yes, I could see exactly where Treize was coming from. Even if I didn't want to.

"Maybe a little," I conceded. I ripped a huge, thick leaf off of a plant with little purple flowers and began tearing it up into tiny pieces. We walked in silence for a few minutes, the path growing steeper with every step as we moved up the parabolic slope of the mountain.

Suddenly, Treize stopped and stuck his arm out to block me from moving any further. Immediately I balked at the gesture, but when I looked in the direction he was pointing his finger, I completely forgot about the insult.

Scarcely ten meters from where we stood was a large, proud buck with a stunning set of antlers that any trophy hunter would have coveted. He was startled by our presence at first, his ears perked, tail kicked up, ready to run...only, he didn't. Instead he stared at us with an intensity that I didn't know existed in an animal that wasn't a born predator. I felt a twinge of guilt then, like I was an intruder in a sacred realm, a stark contrast to the possessiveness that I typically felt about the forest (gloriously mine, every inch of inch of it).

I don't know how long we stood locked together like that. It could have been seconds, minutes, or days for all I knew. With a sudden and spectacular display of power and leaf-kicking, the buck bounded off without any specific provocation, leaving us, captivated, in his wake. When Treize and I looked at each other, we were wearing the exact same dreamy smile.

I stared at him hard. Did he feel it? The glimmer in his eye – was that it? Had I finally met somebody who felt humbled at the feet of the natural world, someone who felt like crying when he thought about how impossibly beautiful the Earth was?

Yes, I knew it. When he smiled like that, just like I did, I knew it. This was no snooty pansy who hated dirt and practiced ballroom dancing for fun. This was a boy who knew the secret that I thought only I knew – that the smell of wet leaves is really the smell our mother's hair, and that the dazzling smear of stars across the night sky is the blanket she tucks us in with. God, he knew it, didn't he?

I felt the beginning of something building between us, binding us together. It was something organic and alive, something so profound that it ached when I tried to touch it. He was the one my mother had been praying for, the boy who would be my real friend and make me happy. The thing I felt between us…I didn't need any more proof. We could have had nothing else in common but that and it would have been enough.

I liked him. A lot.

Treize's fingers brushed so lightly against forearm that I would have missed the gesture if I hadn't watched him do it. "That was lovely, wasn't it, Your Highness?"

"Call me Milliardo."

"Whatever you like."

A short time later, we arrived at the hardest part of the journey, which consisted of a steep, rocky climb on all-fours. We reached and stepped together, practically in unison, glancing over at each other on occasion, smiling every so often. There was something about endeavoring together that felt right in a way I couldn't understand, everything always easier with him, more significant with him, more correct and good with him. It was a feeling that would hang between us as the years progressed, as we became teenagers and then young men.

We reached the top and stood, breathless from the exertion and from the sheer majesty of the view. We were standing at crest of a gigantic cliff that plunged hundreds of feet to the city below, beyond which was the expansive and flawless azure of the bay. The sun was low and just beginning to paint they sky pinkish-orange.

"Amazing…" Treize said, his voice hushed by something more emotional than fatigue. I watched a line of sweat as it trailed down the side of his face, which was already beginning to show the masculine contours that would later make him remarkably handsome.

"This is what I really wanted to show you. This is better than anything." I was overwhelmed as I always was by the beauty of my country, the land I thought I would come to govern. Such a faraway dream, my homeland unspoiled…

We stopped to rest on the rocks and talked about the important things in our young lives like books, fencing, movies, and cars. Mother was right – we had a great deal in common. As we talked, I wondered when I would get to see him again, not knowing that it would be so soon and under such horrific circumstances.

I knew right then on that cliff that Treize was special - no, "special" was never quite the word to describe him. He was brilliant and endlessly mysterious, with a cool but occasionally fierce temperament and a wicked sense of humor that he reserved for only me, I think. He was my best friend, brutally honest when he needed to be but unafraid of entertaining a fool's hope for a better world. As I lived my fraudulent life as Zechs Merquise, he was the one who reminded me of who I'd started out as, the one who I tucked so neatly beneath my mask and uniform. He was the one who helped keep Milliardo Peacecraft alive, even when I wanted to kill my other side for weakening me or driving me to desperation that I couldn't control.

And Treize was perfect, even with the numerous, sometimes fatal flaws that I would later come to know as our friendship deepened and we became more than friends. He was perfect for me and, in the end, the only one I ever wanted.

And now he was gone. Not gone in the sense of living in another country or fighting on a different side. Those I could handle. I could handle him with somebody else. I could handle him a thousand miles away with no intent to return. I could handle these things because at least these scenarios required him to be alive to choose them.

But dead? Dead was what my parents were, what my neglected rubber plant was. It was the way I felt after a 20 mile run. Dead is what happens to old people and tragically ill children who never got a chance to fuck up their lives. Dead is something for the religious to ponder and for the atheists to secretly fear. It never, ever could describe Treize Khushrenada.

Could it?

My heart knew it did, and I wanted to cut it out, kill it, smash it and hate it, spite it for the happiness it gave me before tearing me apart with a simple acknowledgement of truth…

There was that terrible pressure again and that tightness around my throat, strangling me and making me gasp. Dead pressed its brutal mass of ugly weight into my body and I was too tired and skinny to fight it. My vision blurred as I thought about one of the last things Treize ever said to me –

"You've always done what you thought was right, no matter what. That's why everything will transpire exactly as it should."

You're so goddamn cryptic, Treize. I hate you.

I let out a horrible choked sound and – fighting it – I clenched my hands into fists. What I thought was right? I didn't do what I thought was right! I did the only thing that my anger would allow me to do. It wasn't about right and wrong. I didn't think like that. Treize thought like that, but not I. Not after OZ. Not after Sanc fell for the second time. Not after Epyon fucked my mind.

I didn't care about the consequences. I latched onto Quinze's dogma, just like I latched onto Treize's, and I spewed it on cue. It was a cover, just like Zechs Merquise was – a cover that let me settle my grudge with Heero Yuy and let me demonstrate to everybody just how sick I was of murder dressing itself as rightness, honor, duty, and, of all the sick things, justice and fairness.

Nobody was ever fair to Sanc. They weren't fair to six-year-old Milliardo Peacecraft and his family. They weren't fair to Zechs Merquise when he was tired of being a tool of Romefeller, of OZ, and of Treize Khushrenada. And they sure as hell weren't fair to Milliardo Peacecraft the adult, the Goodwill Ambassador, who really did try to do things the right way. How long did that joke last? A couple of days?

What I thought was right? There wasn't an ounce of right in anything that Treize or I did. We were tyrants and monsters, no matter how noble and good our intentions might have been. And Zechs Merquise was the most fearsome monster of them all, the worst of them all…until Milliardo Peacecraft reared his furious head and sucked everything Zechs had ever been into a sea of numbers and calculations and predictions – predictions! It was a piece of software, for God's sake! I tore the world apart because that fucking thing told me it was the only way I'd ever kill the rage that was slowly killing me. How was any of that right?

"How could that be right, Treize?!" I yelled to an empty room, my voice gritty and broken.

And how could you throw yourself to the bastard world you loved so much, as though it actually deserved your concern...as though it would ever appreciate how deep your love for it was...even if your way of showing it was so misguided? You would have let all your blood into her soil if you thought it would make things right and smiled as you bled….How could it be that you would never bleed again, Treize? How could that possibly be….?

I was crying for the first time since I was a child, sobbing uncontrollably – hysterically. This grief, inconceivable in its enormity and so long in coming, consumed me wholly. I cried so hard and for so long that I thought I would never stop. I didn't want to ever stop. I wanted to cry myself dead.

But I did stop. At some point, I fell asleep with Treize's name on my lips, damning him or loving him, I'm not certain. When I awoke, it was sunny. I felt impossibly drained, but at the very least I didn't feel like vomiting. Instead, I was ravenously hungry and somehow numb enough to crawl out of bed and put something in my stomach.

It was the beginning of May, though I didn't know it at the time. It was also the beginning of my recovery, which I didn't know either. Off the drugs, I felt completely alone and empty. The house was quiet, too quiet, filled at horribly unpredictable intervals with the sound of my snarling, swearing, or mumbling apologies and regrets for every breath I had ever taken. I spent a significant amount of time on the couch in the sitting room, thinking about the past - taking up temporary residence there whenever I could. I relived memories of life with the Khushrenadas, of our tempestuous days in OZ, and those heart-achingly few uncensored, unregulated, unplanned days with Treize as my lover and friend and nothing else.

Because of the new and terrible awareness of a world I couldn't stand to be in, I was able to see things I'd previously ignored, like the filthy state of my living space. One day I awoke with an urgently pressing need to clean the place from top to bottom. I found a washing machine in a small utility closet and decided to clean my dirty, sweaty-smelling clothes, which I actually put away afterwards instead of throwing on the floor. I then cleaned out the fridge and noted with a frown the dire lack of provisions.

That, of course, brought me to an entirely different matter: not only had I not paid the rent since February, I'd also had my every meal provided for by the man I wasn't paying. Of all the shame I carried for my actions over the past four months, the blatant disregard for my unreasonably kind landlord was the most pressing and real. Moreover, it was one of the only regrets that I could literally pay for, if only I could get myself to leave the house. I debated it for days, almost too embarrassed to put forth the effort and furious with myself for being so irrational.

Finally, on one not-so-very-special day, I gathered the backlogged rent payments, pulled myself into a state of semi-propriety, and made the trek up to the old man's house. The weather was as phenomenally beautiful as the property, which I'd never allowed myself to appreciate to until just then. On every side of me were rows and rows of crops, verdant and flourishing in the black soil. There was a faint smell of fertilizer in the air, not entirely unpleasant, but just enough to remind me of where I was, even with my eyes closed.

I was winded by the time I got to the house, something I should have expected given my months of inactivity. Still, it was an alien and wholly unpleasant feeling. I had always been so athletic; now I could barely walk a kilometer. I wondered what the Lightening Count would think of me. Would he laugh? No, he wasn't cruel. He would probably be disappointed by lack of dedication to living.

I took a deep breath and ran my hands through my hair, which I'd started brushing again at some point that month. I raised my hand to knock but froze as I heard the sound of that old pickup truck rolling down the long, dirt driveway. Mr. Kazlauskas pulled the vehicle up to the house, grinding the clutch as he shifted. When he saw me, he got out of the cab and walked towards me, waving, with a large smile on his face.

"Oh, Mr. Iversen! I'm so glad to see you!" He clapped me lightly on the shoulder. "Just give me a minute to unload and we can talk inside, okay?"

Before I could respond, he turned, walked back to the truck, and began unloading a large basket of asparagus. I moved quickly to help him, trying not to show the strain of lifting on my face. We carried four baskets of various items of produce inside, and the man asked me to sit in the living room while he prepared a kettle for tea. In the hallway between the kitchen and the living room was a full-length mirror, and, for the first time in I couldn't remember how long, I got a good look at my body. I believe at that point I was officially emaciated, and it was not at all pretty. I lifted up my shirt and could see my ribs and the ruler-straight scar that ran from just below my navel to my sternum.

When the old man caught me gawking at my own gauntness, he said "Bah!" and literally pushed me into the living room. He sat me down on the couch and took a seat next to me in a worn-out upholstered rocking chair. I started speaking the minute my backside hit the furniture, impatient, fearful of not being the first to admit what an irresponsible tenant I was.

"Mr. Kazlauskas, I'm sorry that I haven't paid my rent in so--"

"Oh, please don't, Mr. Iversen. Really!" he interrupted. "I have been checking in on you since you got here. You have been very sick! _I_ should be apologizing for not stopping by recently. I've been busy with the market, you see." His expression was plainly regretful, his bushy eyebrows furrowed with concern.

"No!" I said more forcefully than I had intended. "No, really. I'm horrible. I...can't believe you didn't evict me. And bringing me food was just –"

He reached over and patted my bony knee in a stereotypically grandfatherly way. "Young man, I understand. You have not been well. I have plenty of money without your rent, so don't feel bad at all. And as for the food, well, I have to eat, too! I always make too much, you see." He smiled. "I hope you didn't miss the meat!"

Miss the meat? I hadn't even noticed. But then, there was a lot I hadn't noticed. "I'm ashamed to ask, but what's the date?"

"May 20th – the Pentecost to the believers!" He laughed boisterously.

He graciously let me sit in dark, contemplative silence as we drank a cup of herbal tea together. Afterwards, I tried to pay him extra for his troubles, which he refused outright. He then invited me to the house for dinner the next weekend. Considering my behavior over the last few months, I was in no position to refuse him.

Walking back to my rental, I felt something on the breeze that was light and refreshing, hinting at something new and different. Was it the smell of impending summer? Later that evening there was a spectacular storm, and I opened the windows to let that sweet rain smell in. I stood on the porch and watched the downpour, the lightening's jagged javelins scorching across the black sky and throwing light on the fields.

I wanted Treize there with me, his warm hand around my waist, grabbing a little, a quirk of a smile on his lips, making me squirm because I'm ridiculously ticklish. I wanted him to whisper in my ear, tell me how lucky we were to see such a spectacular display of natural power…and he would tell me that I was like that, like lightening, a magnificent burst of energy that's impossible to hold onto…beautiful, he might even say. And I'd lay my head on his shoulder even though he was a little shorter, because that's what I liked to do sometimes, and he would run his hand down my back, through the fall of my hair, and ask me what I was thinking about. I'd tell him You, You, You, only You, Treize, because the truth is that I love you. Tell me that you love me, too…I need to hear it. I don't want to beg for it, but I will.

Thunder blasted through the night like a sonic boom. I leaned back against the front door and sagged down to the floorboards. A rogue raindrop hit my arm, and I started humming that bath song: Clean the body, clean the soul, something, something, wash it away, down the drain, isn't a bath a marvelous thing? A soft, dark laugh rose from my chest, the timbre of it flat and insincere.

xxx


	5. When We Became We

Title: Limbo  
Chapter: 5/12: When We Became We  
Pairing: Past Treize/Zechs (made present-tense via flashbacks)  
Spoliers: Series, EW  
Warnings: Death themes, male/male sexual situations, foul language, grief, angst, cynicism, debatable instances of sap. Flashbacks throughout. Some citrus in this chapter. Rated M for swears and dark matter and aforementioned fruit.  
Disclaimer: I don't own any part of GW. No monies have been or will be made off of this thing.

Please see Limbo 1 for very important notes.

Heartfelt thanks to all who have taken the time to review, and an additional thanks to those who've added me or this story to their Favorites lists.

I hope you enjoy.

xxx

"Oh! That's a lot of money, Mr. Iversen!"

I handed Mr. Kazlauskas an envelope containing ten thousand credits, a pittance compared to the piles I had shoved in the back of my dresser drawer. "Only if they'll take that much. If not, seven, or even five should suffice."

His old, rough fingers squeezed the envelope a few times, as though he couldn't quite wrap his brain around how much cash he was holding. It was true that paper money was rarely tendered and even considered an antiquity in some large cities, but this was provincial France and Mr. Kazlauskas was elderly. I figured that he would raise few suspicions among the bankers, especially with his delightfully eccentric personality that screamed "hoarder," whether he was or not.

The issue was liquidity – in short, I had none. I was sick of wearing the hand-me-downs from MO-VIII. Running in utility boots every day was growing old and painful, and the sight of my huge, tightly-belted pants was verging on comedic. I wanted clothes that fit and a computer, among other things, so Mr. Kazlauskas offered to get me a prepaid credit card so that I could buy what I needed online. For somebody who'd never particularly favored the activity, I was ready to do some shopping.

I watched him drive off, bound for the nearby city of Saint-Quentin. Beyond the road and to the east I could see a couple of workers inspecting their rows of burgeoning sugar beets. The old man didn't farm for industry like many of his neighbors. Instead, he kept a subsistence crop and sold the overflow at the local farmer's market. I was overseeing the ripening and harvesting of aubergines, tomatoes, a couple of varieties of summer squash, and cucumbers. The tomatoes were vibrant in color and flavorful, and I ate them daily as an unintentional vegetarian. My average meal was a pleasant departure from the stigma the dietary practice carries as a radical form of self-deprivation. I actually enjoyed it, but that could be taken in any number of ways.

That summer was both agonizingly difficult and curiously rewarding. My mood fluctuated pendulously between depression and almost-on-the-cusp-of-contentment, with variants of all degrees in between. My spirits drained with something as simple as the weather and rose with something as complicated as a foray into post-modern French literature. Regardless of how I felt, I abided by a strict schedule that included, without exception, even on the weekends, a full day of work. Every morning I awoke with the sun, ran three times from my rental to Mr. Kazlauskas' house, showered, ate, and worked in the fields until dusk. Once or twice a week I had dinner with my landlord, and the rest of the time I cooked for myself and read into the night. Rinse and repeat times three months.

Throughout my life, people have admired my strict adherence to routine. They call it "dedication" and "discipline," which are definitions far too dignified and starry-eyed for the truth of it. In my OZ days, my routine was a crutch that kept me doing instead of thinking, striving but never really growing. It locked me in place for years on end - a good place, an exalted and respectable place, but it was a lock. A steel trap. That summer in France, my benign, faux-farmer routine served a purpose no more virtuous. It was different kind of trap - the emotional kind, one of my own implementation. There was nothing dedicated or disciplined about it. If anything, it was a little pathetic and smacked loudly of terms like "avoidance" and "escapism."

But the work made me stronger – physically, at least. I found it satisfying in that it was repetitive and mind-numbing. And dirty. There was always a part of me that loved getting dirty, whether with sweat or engine oil or earth. Considering my rank, I wasn't supposed to sully myself with the so-called "hangar rat" work of the enlisted soldiers, but whenever they could find it in their hearts to dismiss their resentment of anything officer, I was grateful to dig my hands into the guts of a suit. When I worked on Mr. Kazlauskas' truck in July, it was the highlight of my month. More than once I caught myself smiling at the filthy gashes on my hands and spent oil under my fingernails while thoughts of an alternative reality trickled through the gyrating fissures of my brain, gravitating downward, pooling, and evaporating under the intense, blazing inescapability of my actual reality.

It was a humble and uncomplicated existence, made more so by my inclination towards the most monotonous activities. There was an abundance of time to let my mind skitter about as it might, refusing focus and direction. Fragmentary thoughts of Libra, the war, my parents, Relena, Sanc, Noin, and the Gundam pilots arose and either receded into dark vats of nothing or were swallowed by a fast-moving undercurrent named Treize Khushrenada. Even after eight long months, he was always there below the surface of my consciousness, wanting to be remembered, responsive to the touch and willing to take me, drag me, smother me, tease me with implicit promises of joy if only I entertained him a little. Just a little was all he needed to pull me, glassy-eyed and limp, into the warm depths of a fond memory. I'd fallen into that black and eager vortex on a few occasions, each time leaving me fraught with distress, knowing I'd done something I ought not have done but secretly happy that I'd done it. It was almost always good, but like a drug, it was the dangerous fact of withdrawal that I had to keep in the forefront of my mind.

But I'm not perfect, and I've been known to fail magnificently, especially when it comes to controlling my impulses. I was digging up a dying aubergine plant one day when I was dragged ruthlessly into the recollection of the first of many conversations Treize and I had about living off the land. It was ridiculous, really, two privileged aristocrats talking about farming as though we had any idea what it actually entailed. It was a marvelous prospect, though…

We were finally on leave after four months of nonstop R&D in Corsica. If such things can be believed, we weren't always at war. Interminably preparing for war, yes, but our daily lives scarcely resembled the frantic, grasping chaos of post-Operation Meteor days. When not training with my assigned unit, my particular skills were often lent to OZ Research and Development, where I tested and consulted on mobile suits in various stages of completion.

I was wild about it, finding tremendous fulfillment in flying some engineer's half-baked box of wires and gears around just to see if I could survive it. Sometimes they malfunctioned and smashed to shit, typically after I bailed out of them but occasionally not. Other times their design and construction were sublime, affording me the closest thing to a religious experience I would know just from the sheer faultlessness of it. These assignments always scared the hell out of Treize, but he never denied me. He spent his share of time with R&D as well, taking temporary leave from combat command to keep his eye on prototypes and upgrades. At the root of his interest was his carefully veiled mistrust of his commanders and certain third parties that suspiciously funded some units more readily than others.

At 21, newly-promoted Major Treize Khushrenada was already elbow-deep in his pet Specials project, but there was something about Prototype Unit 12 that he couldn't shrug off. In Corsica, he spent his days in the hangar and on the proving grounds, watching me, judging me just as readily as he judged the suit. He then spent long nights staring at the schematics and algorithms with a single-minded fixation that rivaled mine, furrowing his brow now and then, and taking slow, contemplative strolls around his small, makeshift office to clear his head or redirect an idea. His unusual reticence on the subject bothered me, especially after harboring hope that we would spend the duration of the duty assignment engaged in long, serious, intimate discussions about technicalities, improvements, and perhaps…other things.

I know now that Treize's mind was employed far more with the philosophical implications of the Taurus prototype than with the technical elements that had me so enraptured. While I was marveling at how fantastically responsive the AI was - almost too responsive, as if it could read my mind - he was peering into a grim future where that AI served as a replacement for pilots. We weren't functioning on the same intellectual plane. It angered me that he refused to include me in his bleak spans of contemplation. Did he think I wouldn't understand, or that I'd laughingly accuse him of being a conspiracy theorist?

But that was Treize.

No, the trip had been strictly, lamentably business and virtually nothing more. Instead of feeling closer after being so rarely paired with him in such tight quarters and working environments, I felt that he'd drifted to a far-off shore. As the tour of duty drew to a close, I asked him to take leave with me, the tone of my request just two slight shades short of desperate. He agreed without hesitation. By the end, we'd both had it with R&D's spare accommodations, long spans of unproductive endeavoring, and clashing cluster-fucks of opposing ideas from too many parties. It was exhausting. We were both exhausted. And the prototype, after all that hassle, was deemed incompatible with the combat profile of the average Specials pilot. Her brain was too big, and she liked to make decisions on her own. No, no, no, said Treize, both personally and through the ironclad authority of Uncle Catalonia. Not yet. Not like this.

I'd lightly suggested taking the train to Russia for our two weeks of leave, which Treize immediately latched onto, refusing to hear otherwise. There certainly was a spontaneity to him, one of the qualities that made him an adept leader and a limitlessly amusing friend. Yes, Treize was amusing – especially when he was out of uniform, which is the way I liked him best. We could only be so much with our masks and formalwear and the emotional burdens of lost comrades, too much stress, and not enough sleep. Without them, we were almost two typical young men enjoying holiday together. One could conservatively guess at how rare these times were and still be overestimating.

I reserved a private compartment on a train that ran from Monaco to Moscow, and I absolutely had ulterior motives in selecting this mode of transport. With no work or expansive estate to afford him distraction, he would be my captive audience. We would reconnect properly, and I could finally get a feel for where I stood – where _We_ stood.

There was only a small something of a We back then, a half-completed sentence that needed serious tending. We'd shared a strong friendship for over ten years, but something unexpected and not a little frightening had started happening to us the year before Corsica. I don't know precisely how it began – perhaps with a careless innuendo, a joke that was suspiciously only half-joking, a trifling obscurity, or a hand that lingered just a second too long. One instance became two, then three, and then they were countless, each more awkward and intense than the last, but none more substantive than a whisper.

These incidents haunted me, filled my mind with heated, lascivious images, and made me preternaturally aware of every word, breath, and movement of the friend I suddenly wanted more from. The more attention I paid, the more I noticed, which only further excited, frustrated, and confused me. I loved him – I always had, in the way that only best friends can love each other. But love, I've learned, can alchemize from fraternal to romantic with only the smallest of suggestions. With each passing day, I sensed that my affection for him was becoming something else, something that seized me, made me breathless and full of the most delicious shame.

I wanted him, obsessed over him, and touched myself to thoughts of his hand instead of mine, only based on the foolhardy hope that he felt even the slightest bit of the same. In uniform and out, on post or off, on duty or leave, it didn't matter when. I had it bad. My life became a series of highly-anticipated vid-phone conversations, staff meetings, informal dinners and formal OZ functions strung together by painfully long bouts of Treize-less distractions like battle and combat simulation. It was torture, though part of me loved every minute of it.

It ceased being a long, ill-defined sequence of agony on the last day of our last vacation together in Russia, when Treize, casually passing me in the hallway, grabbed me by the arm and kissed me. When it happened, it didn't feel like the culmination of anything; it was so brief that it was over before I registered it, giving me a hard-on only after he'd descended the staircase, after I realized what he'd just done to me and what it unambiguously meant.

And immediately thereafter came Corsica, where that kiss – that single, unmistakable confirmation of what I'd only dared to wish for – became a silent behemoth that followed us everywhere. Treize never mentioned it. Indeed, he acted as though it'd never happened. But it was there with us, growing heavier, bulkier, and more insistent as the weeks rolled on. By the time our tour of duty terminated, I was about ready to snap and do something colossally indiscreet.

When we first walked into our private berth at the Monaco station, a wave of panic clenched me as I faced the reality of what close proximity we would be in as we slept. The two bench-style seats that converted into beds were separated by a gap no larger than an arm's length. I allowed myself to linger in the giddy thought that we'd practically be sleeping together. I had completely intended such accommodations when I made the reservation, but being finally confronted with it yielded a nervous excitement that I could barely fake my way through.

Treize acknowledged the arrangement without comment or minutest indication of feeling about it one way or the other. He quickly settled in and took a seat across from me after the train left the station, slouching a little, with his arms crossed over his chest and his legs stretched across the gap that separated us. He was using my bench as an ottoman, his feet planted beside my left hip. His eyes darted to the monitor on the wall, which showed our train crossing into northern Italy.

"I do believe that I will miss Vito," Treize said, referring to the deli proprietor on Corsica. "I think there are tragically few alive who would dare to call me 'Forks.'"

One side of my mouth curved up at the sound of the moniker and the memory of the perplexed look on Treize's face the first time he'd been called it. "At least you weren't 'Clapper.'"

"Most people take reasonable measures to avoid such things. Though, in Lieutenant Kwan's defense, it could have been very unfortunately placed acne."

"I'm surprised he kept going there," I said, glancing out the window at the steep, green valley below. "But then, the food was that good."

Treize closed his eyes in brief remembrance of his favorite dish. "His wife's fiadone was fantastic. I should have brought some for the trip."

Some would think it dubious that Treize Khushrenada ate anything but caviar and beef bourguignon, but they would be ignoring a crucial element of his leadership style: esprit de corps. If his subordinates frequented a quaint local deli, Treize would eat there, too. If his soldiers raved about a club, he would drop by for a drink. He really would. If I hadn't seen it with my own eyes, I wouldn't have believed it. He showed up in a t-shirt, one of those expensive ones that looks just like the cheap ones, threw his arm around my shoulder, the light scent of cologne on his neck, and yelled over the thrumming of the bass that he planned on getting me very drunk. I'm pretty sure I had fun that night.

This hands-on approach to building camaraderie only lasted until Treize reached the rank of colonel, when the rank gap was so large that it would have been inappropriate for him to be seen in such places with such company. I think he was happiest as a major, when he had the freedom to be adventurous and sociable, but commanded the respect due to such a rank. Most of the soldiers enjoyed being around Treize, feeding off of his energy, his intelligence, his confidence, and that strange something about him that was warm, something fragile and personal and tidal that effused in good times and violently, wincingly ebbed when he was irritated or posturing for those Romefeller blowhards.

We were quiet for a few minutes, appreciating the scenery and the smooth, gentle rocking of the train. It was an old line and an older model of train, one not designed for practical purposes like high-speed commuting. It was a train for those who needed a vacation and didn't mind taking a long, calm, measured breath every now and again. I sighed and ran my hand through my bangs, glad to be free of my mask. I then sensed Treize watching me instead of the countryside.

"What?"

He threaded his fingers together behind his head, looking fully en repose. His body was a lean line accentuated by the vertical ribbing on his black jumper and the perfect fit of his khaki slacks. I don't know if he realized how sexy he looked just then. He probably did. He was always self-aware like that.

"If you could be doing something else with your life, what would it be?"

The question caught me off guard, and I'm sure my face showed it. "You mean, right now?"

Treize nodded, smiling a little, encouraging me to give him a good answer.

But what was a good answer? For a long time I thought my work as a soldier was important, and there were many instances when I couldn't conceive of doing anything else. I was good at it, and the occupation was a crucial mark that defined me. I thought about what I _should_ have said, that I would go back to Sanc and reclaim the throne that my father had forcibly vacated, but that wasn't right. Implicit in Treize's question was what I would _want_ to be doing, and being a monarch didn't qualify under that condition. I chewed discretely at the inside of my cheek as I regarded the vineyards and rows of olive trees outside.

"I think I'd want a farm."

One forked eyebrow rose conspicuously. "A farm."

I hated that look. It was one of those expressions that he gave to people he wanted to unsettle in order to test constitution or seize advantage. It didn't necessarily indicate how he felt about a person, as such opinions were kept under close watch and buried skillfully in sarcasm or vagaries. When directed at me, however, I perceived it as a universal negative. The thought of his disapproval made me anxious, especially when I felt that I was now also auditioning to be his potential…what? Lover? Boyfriend? Fuck-buddy? Preferably not the latter, but I'd take it in a pinch.

"What kind of farm?" he continued, his voice not at all patronizing but, in fact, genuinely interested.

"I don't know. Vegetables, grains, grapes. Whatever." I shrugged.

"Milliardo Peacecraft: Farmer-Prince of Sanc?"

"Don't mock me, Treize. I'm serious, and I'm also aware of the irony, thank you."

Treize's smile broadened, exposing teeth orthodontically aligned in a childhood that seemed so very far away. "I didn't mean to mock you. I think it sounds rather idyllic. You could get yourself a nice little wife and have a brood of children to help you bale the hay."

I had a laugh at that one, a dry, rolling rumble from my chest. "Give me a break. Could you see me with a wife and children? Really. Picture it."

His glared at me. He was no longer smiling. "I'd prefer not to."

I felt unfocused under the weight of his intensity as I struggled to formulate an appropriate reply – whatever was appropriate to say to something like that. When I finally spoke, my voice was so small that it was nearly eaten by the smooth sound of the train gliding over the tracks.

"…Then don't bring it up."

There was a noticeable bump as we rolled onto a bridge that spanned a sizeable gorge. My left hand touched at the laces of his black leather oxfords.

"You've thought about this before, haven't you?"

"A bit." I pulled out some of that battle courage that I always had a surfeit of and tested it against the strange intimidation I felt. "You could come stay with me," I offered, my adolescent brain already concocting brave scenarios about what might happen in my secluded, rustic country home. "When you needed a vacation," I hastened to add.

"We could make wine."

"So, just grapes?" I smiled uncertainly at his receptiveness to my fantasy, part of me embarrassed by a childish feeling of eagerness to please him as though he were my Lake Victoria instructor all over again. "We might turn into alcoholics."

"Then we should probably grow some food so we don't get too drunk to work. Though who knows how it will ever get prepared," Treize replied, making light of our mutual inability to cook – which was due mostly to each OZ base catering the officer's chow hall to the tastes and customs of old money. Really, calling it the "chow hall" was a joke. The place could have passed for a two-star restaurant. "Perhaps we should try some cooking over our holiday so that we're prepared for farm life."

I pictured the two of us frowning over a burnt, dried-out roast. "There's no reason we shouldn't be able to cook. It's like Lara said: 'If you can follow instructions, you can cook.'"

"We should be fairly accustomed to following instructions, I think." He bent his legs and moved his feet to rest on the floor. I felt bereft at the loss.

"We have the combined IQ of at least 250."

"If I remember my records correctly, it's more like three hundred and something. That doesn't necessarily indicate culinary aptitude, though."

I grunted in acknowledgment. I felt slightly calmer than when we boarded the train, though we hadn't even skirted the issue of what the hell was going on between us, aside from his fierce admission that he couldn't bear the thought of my being married with children, which was…something, wasn't it?

The sun was setting behind Alps to the west and soon the dining car would begin serving dinner. I looked forward to having a relaxing, anonymous meal with him. No lieutenants, no commanders, no pomp, no procedure. I thought that maybe a little alcohol would smooth things over and perhaps choke back my tension level to something more manageable.

"I can't believe they're still doing construction on billeting," I complained, referring to the Corsica base. "It's been, at the very least, four months."

"The workers certainly do have a predilection for striking."

"Well, the contract director should be notified, then. Get somebody else to do it."

"Was it that horrible, sleeping like that?"

"You should know! Didn't you have to share a bunk with Captain Adams?"

"Technically, yes. But I did have my office."

"Oh, yes. I forgot. Your 'office.' I suppose there was that couch they gave you." I wrinkled my nose as I recalled the thing, which one would swear had been stolen from the lobby of the sleaziest hotel on the island. "It smelled."

"Better than Captain Adams, at least."

"I never did see him in the showers."

Oh, yes. The communal showers - another perk of construction - had been a nightmare for me because of my shameless sexual obsession with my friend. I'd tried so hard to avoid him, but somehow he was almost always there whenever I was.

Treize smiled unevenly and looked back out the window. In the receding light, I could see the faintest of flushes on his cheek, but I convinced myself that it was only coloring from the sunset.

"He is modest."

"Modest? How can anybody be modest in the military? There are unisex washrooms at the academy." My own gaze drifted out the window, catching a view of the shimmering, polished-glass mountain lake that had an enchanting effect on me. It was incredibly beautiful; I wondered if any of the other passengers were taking note of the remarkable natural splendor that was literally right outside their windows.

"Not everybody went to the academy. I think Adams was commissioned out of university."

"Still. He's been in the field. We've all had to piss in front of each other at one point or another. Or worse."

"Would you like to know something that I'm not especially proud of?"

"Let me guess – another confession of Schadenfreude?" I saw his telling smile in the window's reflection, one that reminded me that I knew Treize better than anyone, even the way he prefaced his declarations of not-quite-guilt.

"I enjoy seeing the look on the new-com lieutenants' faces when I tell them that there aren't any latrines on the field training grounds."

I cleared my throat, dropped my voice as low as possible, and gave a go at my best Indian accent. "'Just this hole. You squat, you shit. Throw some dirt on it with your trenching tool. Don't forget to wipe your ass, because I don't want to be smelling it.'"

"Captain Patil's most eloquent explanation – impressive imitation, by the way," Treize replied as his attention lazily drifted back to my face, his words infused with laughter that didn't quite materialize. "He was always so refreshingly straight-forward."

"There's something to be said about an officer who keeps it concise."

He let out a small hiss of feigned pain. "Am I so horribly unbearable to listen to?"

I schooled my voice to mock Treize's, exaggerating the throaty l's and rolled r's, bumping the level of conceit up about a dozen notches. "'When considering this tactic, it is helpful to reflect on the theories of Takahashi, who surmised that one of human kind's greatest weaknesses is his ability to reason in the face of certain death. Indeed, that one should have the presence of mind to reason upon recognition of the inevitability of demise is…something...ancient mores cultivated in something something…'"

"You did take from it the most important point. And I don't sound like that."

"Yes, you do, and I only get it because you _made_ me read Takahashi. Those guys didn't know Takahashi from Tomoguchi from Timothy Teigs. Maybe you should try gauging your audience a little better."

"I will keep that in mind." The tone of his voice told me that he had no intention of doing so. He insisted on giving his soldiers something more cerebral than SOPs and tactics to think about, never questioning their receptiveness to it and never underestimating their intelligence. I thought he gave most of them too much credit. I still don't know if I was wrong for thinking that. "Who's Timothy Teigs?"

"An actor. He was in that movie – I can't remember the name of it – with the computer programmer who becomes a superhero messiah or something comparably improbable…"

"'The Algorithm.' I believe it got four stars out of four."

"So in the three-and-a-half seconds you've had to yourself over the past four months, you checked the movie reviews?"

"Lieutenant McKissick was talking about it with Lieutenant Cheung last month when we were conducting armor stress analyses."

"Sounds like a movie analysis to me."

"They were on break."

"And they thought you wouldn't mind listening to their cinematic commentary."

"They had no reason to censor themselves."

I snorted and fought off a yawn of my own that seemed to inflate my fatigue into bones-deep exhaustion. "I can't wait to sleep tonight," I grumbled as I let my head fall against the back of the seat. Regardless of the dangerous potentiality of our sleeping arrangement on the train, I was thankful that I at least wouldn't be crammed in a bay with nineteen noisy, slovenly lieutenants like I'd been for the last four months.

"There's no rest for the wicked, Zechs," Treize reminded me, as though I had forgotten.

"I'm trying not to think about that, actually."

"Oh?" Another smile, small and sincere, warmed the calm blue of his eyes. "Then what are you trying to think about?" He looked so handsome in that moment, always most attractive when he was being himself, unconcerned with appearing bulletproof and omniscient.

I opened my mouth to say something decisive like 'What's going on with us,' but instead I faltered. My throat suddenly felt full and tight, and when I spoke, my voice was low and thick. "I just want to enjoy our time together."

Maybe it was something about the way I said it, but his entire demeanor changed with those words. His smile dissolved into a thin, neutral line, and his eyes narrowed and refocused, closing off any emotion that had been in them the moment prior. He disengaged his hands from behind his head and let them rest on the bench on either side of him. With a tightly-controlled expression, he stared at me for a silent expanse of time I couldn't measure. I saw his fingers move incrementally at odd intervals, as though he were contemplating doing something with them. He was fidgeting. Treize rarely fidgeted.

I stood then, compelled by some alien audacity that possessed me like a spirit. I swayed for a few moments with the train, looking down at Treize, letting him look up at me. His lips parted slightly and the fingers of his right hand contracted into a loose fist. I walked forward until I was standing on either side of his legs, my knees lightly hitting the bench with each rock of the compartment. All at once, I realized that I couldn't go back to the other side, that I'd trapped myself with no specific intention except to compel something to happen between us besides niceties and insinuations. It was at once terrifying and elating, the terror stemming from nothing more elaborate than inexperience. The elation, I suppose, was borne from the same.

I felt it then, his hand, oh-so-light against my leg, touching along a crease in my trousers. Then his other hand, a more substantial presence, moved up the side of my opposite leg and came to rest on my hip. I saw Treize bite his lip for the briefest of moments as his fingers pressed into me, holding me firm against the motion of the train and my own unsteady legs. I felt myself stir as my mind clouded over, the two things seeming to happen in direct proportion to each other. My behavior was so blatant, such a brazen demand for attention. That he was actually obliging me was, my God…I couldn't believe I was getting what I wanted.

I reached out an uncertain hand and ran my fingers through his hair. I'd done such a thing before, but always as a joke accompanied by some brotherly and hypocritical jab about vanity. It was a bit stiff from styling product, but it began to fall free as my fingers combed through slowly, dipping at times to trace a sideburn, the outline of an ear...For a time I simply stood there, letting him touch me as he liked while I traced the line of his jaw, the curve of his eyebrow…all of those wonderful places that I'd only felt before by way of careless or carefully planned gesticulation. His slow and careful hands coaxed a shuddered sigh from me as they slid down my backside, and his gaze fixed rather plainly on my crotch, which was just below his eye level, jutting out, giving me away completely.

I let him guide me, pull me, push me until I was on my back, my body canted, legs hanging off the bench as though a sudden wave of exhaustion had plowed me over from a proper sitting position. In a move so fluid that I barely noticed it, he was half on me and half beside me, his slight frame wedged between me and the back of the wide seat. Tentative. Half-committed. His eyes searched mine for permission to do what he'd already done, though he already had it and would have realized that if he'd still been looking in the right place. I could feel his hitching breath against my ribcage and hear each quick, shallow exhalation with pristine, hyper-attuned clarity. It was exactly what I wanted to hear – his slipping control, his weakness, his mortality. Somewhere in the background of him, I heard my echoed response as the quiver in my stomach reached up to constrict my lungs and throw my heart into a frantic rhythm. I touched his face again with the hand that wasn't pinned beneath his body and pressed my lips to his.

There was restraint in our kissing, a not-unpleasant hesitation wrought by an underlying fear of what might happen if we stopped caring about the speed our physical relationship was moving at: zero-to-six-hundred. There was something safe in the awkwardness of our physical arrangement; the fact that my feet were still on the floor served as grounding to keep the charge between us in check. It was completely irrational, but I was sure that if I stretched my entire body onto the bench, we'd have to go all the way, right there and then. There'd be no way around it. It was a certainty derived from mistrust in my own self-control and new, bold assumptions about my powers of sexual persuasion.

He broke the kiss with a delicacy that seemed cinematic in a perfect, romantic way and allowed more of his warm weight to bear down on me. His eyes were sharp and alert even as I felt him relax. "Is there anything in particular you want to do during our time off?" he asked, his voice undercut by the tension I also felt in his fingertips as they moved in a vexingly chaste line just above the waistband of my slacks.

"I don't know," I replied, suddenly irritated for reasons I didn't understand. I twisted my trapped hand around and confirmed with a daring grasp what I thought I'd felt pressing against it. He jerked at the suddenness of it and sucked a sharp breath between his teeth. The feel of him in my hand, hard and twitching, reminded me of the obvious but still foreign fact that we were doing something sexual. One moment we were on opposite sides of the compartment talking about Timothy Teigs. A single moment later, it seemed, I was holding his cock. We'd sprinted to the next level with so little effort, into territory that was uncharted, serious, and irreversible. It was something as intimidating as it was exciting, as easy as it was complicated. "Like you said…cook something..."

"Like what?" His touch lingered, languished in that dispassionate place, wasted by some default notion of propriety that was as pointless as an umbrella in a typhoon.

"I don't know," I snapped, grabbing his hand and forcing it down to where I wanted it, shoving against it as I held it there with obstinate insistence until he finally shucked off some failed failsafe he'd set and allowed himself to participate. It was because I wasn't an adult, which was a bullshit reason. I was a soldier, and I'd forfeited the liabilities and conveniences of my age upon commission.

His eyes went dark and half-lidded as he unzipped my pants with a freshly-awakened urgency and touched me like that for the first time. He jerked me off, just like I fantasized about except incalculably better. I enthusiastically returned the favor later that night after an exquisite dinner that we stupidly smirked our way through and barely tasted.

And that's how We officially began - on a train. As for what we ended up doing on vacation, we did do some cooking…when we weren't in his bed. It didn't take much persuasion at all to get him to give me what I wanted, what he so badly wanted to take from me. On the night that it finally happened, he confessed his long-held, secret desire for what he hoped was my virginity, admitting in a breathy whisper to feelings that started long before they became even subtly apparent to me. When it finally happened, it was wonderful – after I was through being terrified and embarrassed about the whole thing.

But that vacation marked the start down a hard road of self-denial, obfuscations, and trysts, and a very real threat grew steadily with every illegal expression of our affections: the threat of total career destruction. It was a tightrope act that we would mostly master, with a few frightening slips that would turn me into a paranoid wreck for weeks on end as I waited to be exposed, first as a queer and then as Milliardo Peacecraft....

But it never happened.

Back at Mr. Kazlauskas' farm, I closed my eyes as I drove back the memory of doing those things with him. I could feel the heat in my cheeks, equal parts wanting and shame for wanting. I distracted myself by inspecting the failed aubergine plant for signs of infestation and, finding none, pulled it from the ground and put it in a basket to take to the composter. Standing, I looked at the rows of thriving vegetables and wondered why this particular one had died. Sometimes, I think, there's no good reason for death.

The weather that day was particularly glorious. I took my time walking back to my landlord's house, admiring the overwhelming abundance of life around me. I know Treize would have loved it. I heard the familiar sound of Mr. Kazlauskas' pickup and stepped up my pace to meet him. He greeted me in his animated fashion, waiving an envelope vigorously.

"They let me put it all on here, Mr. Iversen!" he exclaimed, handing me the envelope. Inside was a credit card attached to the bank's propaganda pamphlet that went with it ("A New Dawn for the World - A New Dawn for Banking").

I could feel myself smiling, not only at the old man and my now conveniently electronic money, but at the ridiculousness of the Federal Bank of Europe's new ad campaign.

"I appreciate it, Mr. Kazlauskas."

"Bah! Call me Vadimas! And I can call you Erik. I'd say we're at least acquaintances, don't you think?"

I nodded. Yes, he had my permission to call me by my other false name. I wondered if he'd even care if I told him who I was.

"And you can use my computer to order a computer of your own. Anytime!" He started walking to the house and then turned his head to call out that he was looking forward to my cooking.

That evening, when I was in his kitchen frying patty pan squash in olive oil and thyme, I thought about how far I'd come culinarily. As we intended, Treize and I really did learn how to cook respectable meals together, and it wasn't nearly as horrible as I'd envisioned. Our first roast had actually tasted quite good.

Standing over the stove, I wondered if he'd ever been serious about having a life after the war, or if he'd been anticipating his dramatic exit even while describing what shade of marble would be best for our countertops. Dark grey, almost black. Modern. The kitchen would be modern. It seemed like such a silly, implausible, childish dream. It was a dream that I had hedged an immense emotional bet on, and it had proven as evanescent as the life I'd wanted to share it with.

Absently stirring the vegetables, I entertained the "why" of his death. Did I do it? No. Did I want to? Absolutely, and for no reason other than that I'd reached a saturation point where I could no longer stomach another florid polemic about the beauty and fragility of the human condition.

Nearly everything I did in the war was driven by a decade-and-a-half of desperation. I had watched Sanc fall to the Alliance, the Alliance fall to OZ, OZ splinter into factions, and Sanc once more fall, this time to Romefeller. Like dominoes – mere game pieces – cascading, dragging nations and lives down with them, the power struggles continued, heedless of the death and outrage they elicited. I had to do something, and it had to be big. I think I'd have done something whether or not Treize had been there to oppose me. The fact that he stood in my way was something he coordinated, not I. That's the way it worked with him. Even when I wanted to escape him, I still ended up tightly bound in his warm, firm grasp.

It infuriated me that he tried to use me as an implement of suicide, and it sickened me that I so eagerly gave in to his taunts. My hurt and anger had consumed me to the point where I didn't care about what we had and what I'd lose by killing him. I didn't see our past or future. I only saw rage and a machine's promise of a swift end to it. There'd been a whisper in the back of my brain that told me he'd be pleased if I killed him, just as there was another that begged me to reconsider. By that point, I'd parsed my personality into so many pieces that I couldn't tell who was me and who was my mantle.

There were certain undeniable truths about the war that weren't subject to the cynical or romantic slant of my retrospection. One was that Treize sacrificed immeasurably for the humanity he loved, surrendering personal freedom, rest, and normalcy, among many other things. He truncated his life by at least five dozen years just to attempt to stir the souls of the people. His personal forfeiture was great and courageous; I would never refuse him that. And on an emotional level, I could understand and accept his reasons for what he did, for I'm certain he felt the same despair as I.

No, not the same. I'm sure his pain was greater, for he was always far more compassionate and sympathetic than I ever was. His was a profound, quiet agony that affected him so deeply that I wonder if, subconsciously, he welcomed his hero's death for more personal reasons. Is that morbid? Presumptuous? It's sure as hell sad…so sad…because all of it was completely unnecessary…

I think at some point that summer I tried to admire the twisted logic of his plans for peace. Somewhere between sorrow and longing, I wanted to determine his actions to be good. I wanted to think that I'd tried to crush an effort that was beautiful and righteous instead of violent, appallingly naive, and misconceived. But in order to see Treize's world in this light, I had to ignore the blood that pooled around his feet, thicker and sadder with every assassination, every widow's cry, every shredded and burnt body. No peace without sacrifice, I tried to rationalize. Everything was done with the best of intentions to teach a necessary and eternal lesson. And my actions helped him – yes, maybe that was my plan all along, to help him. I almost convinced myself of that on a particularly mindless and whimsical Thursday. It was the most outrageous lie I'd ever told myself, one that I must have needed to believe in that moment. It didn't stick, of course.

But whether he was right or wrong, saint or Satan, forward-thinking or deluded, I didn't care. Those adjectives - those petty and inadequate words - weren't Treize Khushrenada. They were the only explanations anybody could afford for a man as complicated, with ideals so foolishly grand and optimistic that they begged a thousand adjectives and somehow defied them all.

I just wanted him back. It was the simplest and most impossible of wishes.

"Shit."

I burned the squash.

"Smells good, Erik!" Vadimas called out from the living room.

I sighed and put my hands on my hips, staring down at the blackened mess I'd made in my inattentiveness.

How long was this going to last?

"Oh, that looks wonderful!" the old man said, suddenly at my side.

"I don't think that's quite the word I'd use."

"No, no, try it. I think you'll be surprised," he reassured, nudging me with his elbow.

I grabbed a fork from the drawer and skewered one of the sad little vegetables. It looked pathetic. Expecting the worst, I bit into it reluctantly.

"There is no reason why that should taste the way it does," I commented as I went for another piece.

"See? I told you! You're a natural, I think."

Huh. Imagine that.

xxx


	6. Do You Know How Polite I Am?

Title: Limbo  
Chapter: 6/12: Do You Know How Polite I Am?  
Pairing: Past Treize/Zechs (made present-tense via flashbacks)  
Spoliers: Series, EW  
Warnings: Death themes, male/male sexual situations, foul language, grief, angst, cynicism, debatable instances of sap. Flashbacks throughout. Military-ness. Rated M for swears and darkness  
Disclaimer: I don't own any part of GW. No monies have been or will be made off of this thing.

Please see Limbo 1 for very important notes.

This chapter got crazy long. Maybe too long. Oh, well. I hope you enjoy it anyway!

xxx

"Tonight at 02:00 hours, all of second platoon will assemble here at the juncture between utility road three and this defunct lay of railroad track. This will from hereon be labeled rendezvous point Bravo."

Treize used a long stick to point to two other parallel sticks and a perpendicular line of discolored, frayed twine that he had arranged on his makeshift sand table earlier that day. The diagram was impressive for an improvisation; mounds and ridges in the dirt detailed the topography of the training grounds and positions of each of the three companies currently utilizing the facility.

"At 02:05 hours, we will begin moving north along the utility road - approximately 3.4 kilometers - until we approach this tree line here." Point. "This spot will be hereafter labeled rendezvous point Charlie."

The trees were represented by sprigs we had collected from fallen pine branches around our encampment. I had broken apart a massive pine cone and used the pieces for the bivouac tents in each company, assuming a circular perimeter with the commander and executive officer snug in the middle. I wanted to smack one of our lieutenants when he remarked to his friend that the scaled-down representation of our site was "cute." It kind of was, though.

"I can say with reasonable certainty that Major Galanos will have his soldiers paired up in twos, which likely means ten tents in this configuration plus one for his XO and one for himself here." Point. "Unlike our site, I know that his soldiers retreat from guard duty at midnight."

Treize loved ground training. He loved wearing his full battle rattle, which included camouflage battle dress uniform, Kevlar helmet, flack vest, canteens, ammo pouches, and bayonet. He loved running tactical drills and carrying an assault rifle. He also loved digging foxholes, sleeping in small tents, and eating cold, unpalatable rations. He never kept his love for ground training a carefully guarded secret, despite the peculiarity of a man of his social stature favoring such training conditions against the wealth-built cleanliness of the sim tank. In many ways, Treize would have been well suited for the armies of the previous era, something he was aware of and took a measure of pride in. He was tough. Sometimes his elegant intellectualism made us forget this.

What Treize did not love was Major Galanos, which was why he was planning a late night ambush on the man's encampment. Galanos, who had been one of Treize's flight instructors at Lake Victoria, was an unapologetic modernist, firmly convinced that ground training was a dead antiquity from an age before mobile suits arrived and saved us all from getting our dainty aristocratic hands dirty. He was rankled that we hadn't even brought our Leos into the field. "That's realistic," he'd muttered under his breath at Colonel Cavanaugh's pre-mission command briefing back at the base, glaring at the smug turn of Treize's lips.

Galanos' attitude, one that grew increasingly unpopular as Treize's influence proliferated, was exactly the type that Treize loathed in a soldier. In his mind, a soldier was either willing to assume all responsibilities incumbent of the title, or he was no soldier at all. Galanos thought that Treize was merely pandering to the typically wasteful, anachronistic whims of Romefeller, not realizing that Romefeller was willfully blind to the day-to-day workings of OZ. "Ground training is for the safety of the soldier. Surely you are not opposed to keeping your soldiers alive," Treize had been heard commenting to Galanos after the briefing. And so it had always been between them, both men stubbornly convinced of their own correctness, both eager to trade jibes as they tested the limits of professionalism.

"Our objective is twofold: steal their unit flag and disarm as many soldiers as possible. Hernandez and Krieger, you have the best run times, so you will approach their encampment from the southeast and head for the center, which is where Major Galanos' tent should be. The flag should be posted like ours is, right at the commander's door. Take it and run as fast as you can back to rendezvous point Bravo. You will wait for the rest of us there."

I detected a hint of remorse in Treize's voice, a longing for days past when his own speed had earned him special recognition and assignment. Back in his academy days, he was tremendously fast, always effortlessly and admirably athletic. He was the top fencer, the top runner, top pilot, top student, top junior instructor. It was a bundled package, every part inextricable from the rest, like an intricate three-dimensional molecular model. This structure of unusual talent went by the common name "The Best," a label that became a subtitle to his name and rank: "Cadet/Lieutenant/Captain Treize Khushrenada: The Best." It was a title he came to expect, his youthful sense of invincibility blotting out the logical conclusion that he would only get older, slower, and busier with each passing year. When he was eighteen and a mobile suit incident on X-18999 tore a pair of disgustingly enormous holes in his right leg, a complex system of denial and rationalization became his only way to cope with the untimely demise of his physical prime.

Three years later, he could often be seen sparring at the base's salle with members of the fencing club that he presided over, always practicing, reaffirming his title, soothing his doubts. For a time, he was once again the top fencer - firmly seated, comfortable, assured. Then Captain Loutrec arrived. After that, Treize would frown in an uncharacteristically self-depreciating way and say that he wasn't fast enough to beat the man, only indirectly acknowledging that his failure was due to his ruined leg. I would occasionally drop in to watch him practice, and I observed a predictable pattern that emerged at every meeting. Ninety to one-hundred minutes into it, almost like clockwork, his lunges would become shallower and his advances would begin lose strength. His competitive aggression would turn into a desperate push through pain, fueled by firm unwillingness to believe that somebody his age could have a bad leg. I imagined a small grimace of discomfort on his face below his mask, one tinged by nagging frustration with the limb, which was part artificial graft and part his own body's frenzied effort to correct a gross aberration. I never joked about it, for it was a reality that I didn't want to face either.

We were a good command team. Together, we ran our soldiers through drill after grueling drill, unrelenting, if only to spite some soldiers' presumptions about the entitlement they felt Specials officers deserved. The bulk of the force hailed from privileged families, weeded from other applicants by that innocuous-looking personal information section on the application. There were a handful of charity cases, mostly to keep the OZ inspector general from pinning down a firm accusation of classism. The resulting stock at its untrained baseline was, as Treize put it in a huff of annoyance one day, "A herd of swooning, prissy, weak-ankled nancies." Treize and I denied having such qualities, favoring ourselves adventurous woodsmen undeterred by filth and hardship, a characterization we had carried with us from childhood.

For the new soldiers still floating in the Lake Victoria fantasy that mobile suits are infallible, ground training was a nightmare conceived for pure, evil pleasure by the twisted minds of deranged madmen at brigade command. Where Galanos was soft, understanding, and quietly mocking of the exercise, Treize and I were harsh, uncompromising, and deathly serious. Any slacking, commiserating, or complaining was met with a thorough chewing-out by me or sometimes even Treize, which had a particularly motivating effect. The best way we found to inspire interest in our soldiers was to do everything ourselves with great vigor and ferocity. For some, simply watching Treize and I fight our way through a muddy obstacle course was enough to awaken their own inner filthy woodsman. In the young aristocratic soldiers' minds, if Duke Khushrenada and Baron Merquise could roll in the dirt, choke down rations like pros, shit in the woods, sleep on the ground, and go a week without properly bathing, they could perhaps cram their yapping and suck it up.

"Captain Merquise and I will lead the rest of second platoon from position to position, seizing weapons. Each tent should be spaced far enough apart that, if we observe noise discipline, we should be able to move along without the adjacent tent knowing that we're coming. After we seize the weapons from the two soldiers at each position, one person will remain at that position to prevent them from going to their commander. If they try to move, shoot to kill."

Instead of bullets, each assault rifle was equipped with a laser, which could be detected by the specially treated uniforms that each soldier wore. During the week of training, the battalion ran scheduled combat exercises pinning each company against the others, and if a direct hit was scored, points were lost. The rules didn't explicitly forbid unscheduled confrontations like the one Treize was planning, but it was generally assumed that the companies would keep to themselves during downtime. Treize had a fondness for taking advantage of general assumptions. He would actively seek opportunities to exploit flaws in training, tactics, and strategy, often with a dramatic flair that made his point obvious and memorable. A substantial part of Treize's image was build on a foundation of animated retellings of his audacities, stories that fueled the jealousies of those who weren't there to see them in person. His showmanship earned him admiration and ire, and even his strongest critics couldn't honestly deny the correctness of many of his conclusions.

"Regardless of how many weapons we've collected, we will move out for rendezvous point Charlie exactly fifteen minutes after we encroach upon their position. It will be your responsibility to leave their encampment on time. If you do not, one of those disarmed soldiers is going to run to Galanos and you very well might end up in their brig tent."

At that point, we handed out custom made wristwatches that alerted the wearer with a small electrical shock, like static charge from a car door, instead of an alarm. Treize described the sensation as feeling "like somebody is tearing your arm hair out," a description that made even the bravest in the group tense. I knew from experience that Treize was exaggerating, something he did when he was getting bored. How he managed to bore himself to death with his own briefings was beyond me.

"Do not get caught. If you move quickly, quietly, and according to instruction, our mission will not fail. Are there any questions?"

Treize scanned the faces of his twelve officers, looking for signs of doubt or confusion. "Fix your chinstrap, Lieutenant Keese," he said when he saw the soldier's helmet strap unsecured, dangling along the side of his face. The soldiers thought it looked more Hollywood like that, though it completely defied the function of the equipment, which was to stay on the head.

Our gazes crossed briefly before I saw the telltale sign of trepidation on Lundholm's face."Do you have a question, Lieutenant Lundholm?" I asked.

His eyes widened and he ducked his head as I singled him out. He was new to the unit and, by all accounts, was terrified of me. I can't imagine why. "I-I just don't know how you plan on seizing their weapons, sir."

"I will ask for them. If they refuse, I will insist," Treize explained nonchalantly.

This exercise, though tactically valuable, was really an excuse for Treize to humiliate Major Galanos. He knew from careful observation that Galanos had a slight issue with unit cohesion – very slight, nothing more than a small tear in his command structure. He excelled in the technicalities of leadership, but Galanos lacked the personality to bind soldier to commander in a way any more meaningful than the rank system required. "They wouldn't die for him," Treize quietly concluded the night before when he came to my tent to discuss the next day's training schedule. "They'd stop at the edge, pause, push on only because of an idea that they should, perhaps, but never because of him." Treize's soldiers died for him. Thousands and thousands and thousands. I would have, too. Back then.

"I know that it seems simplistic, but if we confiscate even one weapon, we can claim victory. Every soldier has orders from his commander to never let their weapon out of sight unless directly ordered by an authorized individual, which, according to chain of command rules, does not include me. If Galanos is not taking this training seriously, it will show in his soldiers."

Treize had the ability to enchant his subordinates with one single word: victory. Achieving victory with Major Treize Khushrenada had the legendary reputation of being one of the most fulfilling experiences of one's career. People begged, bribed, and fought their way into Treize's units based on this mythology alone.

Hernandez, smirking, spoke up. "This is a bit atypical for ground training, isn't it, sir?" he asked, looking at me even as he asked the question to Treize. In any unit I helped Treize command, there were always certain soldiers who were "mine" and certain soldiers who were "his." Hernandez was mine. Many responded to both of us equally, but soldiers played favorites with us even as we strove with great care to refuse our own similar inclinations. Some preferred Treize's driving sense of higher purpose, which manifested in eloquently woven words about honor and duty that lifted the soldiers' spirits, easing them through tough times, reminding them of why they joined the elite Specials - even if their true reasons were as selfish as wanting to blow off their parents.

As for the soldiers who favored me, most did so out of admiration for my reputation, which at that point consisted of a whole hell of a lot of talent dashed with flecks of rebellious insubordination that kept me from being classified as a goody-boy (though that never stopped people from calling me that anyway, among many more unflattering nicknames). I was blunt, honest, and engaged, always willing to help a soldier who needed it and gave a damn, and on the rare occasion that I did trend towards ideology, it was always tainted with grim realism that some soldiers preferred to the heart-fluttering poetics of our commander.

"That is true," Treize replied, "and I think everybody would be better off if more operations like this were conducted. What is the point of training as a foot soldier if you never encounter real enemy resistance during that training? We train to fight, not to appease brigade commanders. Some people forget that."

It was unprofessional to criticize another commander in front of subordinates, even indirectly, but the effect was evident as I watched the soldiers react to our leader. His words emboldened them, made them hold their heads a little higher, made their posture a little straighter, and fueled their excitement about helping their commander settle a grudge. With every sentence, expression, and action, he was indoctrinating them with his own values, and with each passing day they carried themselves more and more like him. Together, we would all dig our fingers into that fracture in Galanos' unit and rip through it like an raging infection. Together. _That_ was unit cohesion.

"Any other questions?" He paused and then nodded. "If you feel you need to go over the details of the operation once more, speak with your squad leader. Until then, get some chow, attend to you weapons, and, if you can, get some rest. I will see you at 02:00. Fall out."

The soldiers scattered, heading back to their positions to do as ordered. Treize and I remained by the sand table.

"It will be a clear night tonight. Are you sure you want to come?" Treize asked, poking his stick into the groove that represented the river.

Since battle dress meant Kevlar helmet, wearing my mask was not an option. During the day I wore the sunglasses from my cadet days, but at night that would obviously impact my vision unfavorably. I was uncomfortable without my accustomed protection, though I wasn't about to skip out on this particular mission because of it.

"I wouldn't miss it."

Treize smiled. He was oddly pale despite the heat and the sun. "I don't think you'll regret it."

Battle dress suited him well. It accentuated his rougher edges in a way that a dress uniform never could. Treize was not beyond being ruthless and crude. He was, after all, a young man with a tremendous amount of power, responsibility, stress, and ambition, even at that stage in his career. He had a slightly greater tendency towards roughness in the field, as though the surroundings necessitated it, excusing him from the gentlemanly expectations of the ball and conference rooms. He was still respectable enough, though, unless he could find a good excuse not to be, in which case all bets were off. It was an unpredictability that excited me, encouraging me to push him harder than I typically would.

"Oh," he added, "and the supplier packed cigarettes in the rations. If you catch anybody smoking, feel free to smoke them." 'Smoking' was a term for physical punishment that typically included pushups and the evil bastard cousin of the pushup: the squat-thrust.

A few moments of silence passed between us as I bit my tongue, reluctant to bring up what had happened the week prior but unable to get it off my mind. I watched him as he looked over his expansive model, no doubt calculating distances and rates of travel with his brilliant, mathematically adept brain. As I eyed him candidly, the strong angles of his face - further accentuated by nearly a week of intense physical training and unsavory rations - struck me as absolutely perfect. Of course, I did feel a certain way about him, but his face was also extraordinarily well-formed in the geometric and aesthetic sense. His features were perfectly symmetrical, nary an odd mark or peerless dimple to be seen (for the record, he had two dimples that murdered his stoic handsomeness by way of sheer adorability, compelling his own personal War on Grinning that I routinely strove to foil for my personal enjoyment).

I loved him. I wanted to say it right then, which I thought quite beyond the realm of possibility. But, God, wouldn't he have been shocked! I don't even know how he would have reacted to something like that. If I could relive that moment once more, I would have said it without hesitation, if only to etch the look on his face into my memory forever. Instead, I said something that would darken his mood and sour our relations for a few hours.

"We need to talk."

Treize didn't even dignify my statement with eye contact. Instead, he knelt down to modify the features of the table. He toyed with the curve of his utility road in an imprecise, disinterested way. "No, we don't. There's nothing to discuss. Not about that, at least."

"So, you're going to pretend that it didn't happen so that it can happen again? You can't just let it slide, Treize."

"I can and already have." He looked up at me with a withering expression that oozed disdain. "You're dismissed, Captain. Do try to use my rank next time you address me."

I glared down at him, furious at his flippancy. He was done with the subject and done with me, but I'm nothing if not persistent. I would continue to bring it up again and again until he did something other than dismiss me as a nuisance.

Saluting in the field is strictly verboten, so I turned sharply on my heels and stormed back towards my tent, fuming. On the way there, I passed a smoking soldier and put the heat on him to a degree vastly disproportional to his crime. Treize later told me that he could hear my yelling from all the way across the encampment, which was careless and tactically stupid of me. After I finally laid off of the poor lieutenant, I didn't feel any better.

At the appointed hour, we assembled at point Bravo and began the run to Galanos' camp. We traveled single file in the deep ditch along the side of the utility road, with Treize and the two flag-stealers in front and me bringing up the back of the formation like a good XO. When we reached point Charlie, Treize stuck out his right hand and made a downward gesture, the silent command for "take a knee." There, we performed our practiced routine of synchronizing our chronometers for fifteen minutes while Hernandez and Krieger went for the flag. Treize then pulled me up to the front of the formation and we waited two minutes before heading towards the enemy encampment. On the way there, we passed the lightening-fast Hernandez and Krieger, who bore the Alpha Company guidon proudly.

"Not a soul in sight," Krieger, also mine, reported to me.

"Good work. Stay low on your way back," I replied.

They nodded and took off. Treize led the rest of us to the first tent he spotted on their perimeter. We all crouched down and he wasted no time opening the flap and shining his red-tinted flashlight at the sleeping faces of the two hapless occupants. Peering over his shoulder, I watched the ensuing performance.

"Wake up, soldiers."

The two young men stirred, and, coming to their senses, sat up in their sleeping bags. One of them had sweaty, messy hair half-plastered to the side of his head.

"I need you to give me your weapons. Major Galanos is taking an inventory because somebody misplaced theirs. He called me over to help him collect. I hope you won't mind."

Immediately, one of the soldiers reached for his weapon and his partner, sensing that his cohort was doing the right thing, grabbed his. I couldn't tell if they were going to shoot Treize or surrender their rifles.

"Yeah, sure," the crazy-haired soldier mumbled, clearly unaware of who he was talking to. It was doubtful that he could even see our faces with Treize's flashlight blinding him. He handed over his weapon.

Treize took it, passed it to me, then took the other. "Okay, soldiers. Go ahead and try to get some more sleep. Your weapons will be returned soon."

It was as simple as that. Treize closed the flap, stood, and pointed to one of his lieutenants, a pre-arranged sign that he was to guard this tent. The rest of us moved to the next position. As we approached, we could hear voices. Treize made the sign for us to halt and take a knee. We heard a female's voice -

"Yes...Harder..."

- and then the unmistakable grunt of a male.

Treize and I exchanged a look that was somewhere between amusement and disgust. There was a moment of acknowledgment there, a reminder that we did things like that behind closed doors, unbeknownst to everybody in our present company. Our precious, dirty, and dangerous secret.

The soldiers we were leading, well aware of what was going on in that tent, freely expressed their feelings on the subject.

"That's nasty. Nobody's had a shower in a week," one lieutenant whispered.

"Quiet," I commanded.

Treize, unafraid of a little copulating, moved closer. He didn't open the flap for obvious reasons, but crouched in front of it.

"Hey!"

Inside, we could hear the "Did you hear something?" of the male and the "Shhh!" of the female.

"This is Major Khushrenada."

"Oh, God!" the male exclaimed, then "Uh, yes, sir?"

"Are you aware that Specials regulation 37-F strictly forbid sexual contact between soldiers on duty, the punishment for which can and frequently does include trial by court martial?"It was an embellishment of the sentence and a made-up code number. Treize wasn't the regulations wonk people assumed he was. He had better things to do than memorize rules he didn't follow.

"Sir, we haven't done anything of the sort," the female lied. That really pissed Treize off.

"Do you think I'm an idiot?" Though his voice was calm, there was a sharp undercurrent beneath which hinted at an anger that soldiers had wildly speculated about in close quarters with peers. They'd never seen it, and they likely never would. The implicit threat was far more terrifying and made for a magnificent preemptive behavioral modifier.

I'd experienced it before - Treize's real anger. Once. It was after one of his soldiers had been caught brutally raping a female soldier. From behind a closed door, I heard pure venom in Treize's voice as he told the kid that he was going to destroy him and, by association, his entire family's quite substantial reputation. When he spoke to the soldier, his voice was low and his words startling, so foreign, so cruel, so unlike the person I'd grown up with. Deserved as those words may have been, they made my fingers dig into the upholstered arm of the chair in the waiting room outside of his office - had he known that I was listening, I wonder? The young man descended swiftly into hysterics and an endless string of sobbed apologies, at which point Treize literally said that he was going to break the kid's face if he didn't get the fuck out of his office in thirty seconds. It was the first time I heard him swear at a soldier, though not the last.

The victim had begged Treize for a quick and tidy end to the matter, as tidy as rape can possibly be, so he didn't bring down the Stambaugh family with specific accusations. Instead he kicked the kid out of service with a general discharge, had the man who cooked Romefeller's books dig up the impressively long history of Stambaugh corporate tax evasion, and proceeded to anonymously break the story to a ferocious media that tore the family apart mercilessly. The kid must have remembered Treize's promise, even if his meticulously-covered tracks left no clue to prove his involvement. When the young man committed suicide later that year, Treize said "hm" and continued on with his paperwork.

So, did Major Galanos' soldiers think that Treize Khushrenada was an idiot?

"N-no, sir."

"I'll tell you what - you hand over your weapons, and I won't inform Major Galanos of your brainless infraction of unambiguous policy."

"…Okay"

"Stock first."

We took their rifles but didn't bother staging a soldier to guard them. They weren't about to run to their commander and tell them the enemy commander had blackmailed them into handing over their weapons after he caught them fornicating.

The next tent only had one person in it.

"Where is your cohort?"

The soldier, bleary-eyed, reached for his glasses. "He...um…." The soldier reached over and felt around the empty sleeping bag beside him, as though he would find a full-grown soldier buried in there somewhere.

"He…?"

"I don't know, sir."

"Well, he's 'I don't know' without his weapon, isn't he?" Treize made a beckoning gesture with his hand and the bespectacled soldier, riddled with confusion and distress over his peer's whereabouts, handed over the weapons as though it was the expected punishment for missing battle buddies.

By the time we collected and staged an officer to guard, we only had two minutes before we would have to return - just enough time for one last tent occupied by two males.

"Major Galanos asked me to circulate around the company and collect weapons; Colonel Cavanaugh is at the command tent and has ordered a surprise inventory."

"Of course, sir," one of the soldiers said, grabbing his weapon to hand over.

"Wait," the other one said, stopping his partner. He eyed Treize critically. "What's the code?"

"You know, your commander was frankly a bit frazzled over the colonel's arrival and completely forgot to give it to me."

The resistant soldier's composure was unrelenting. "Then you can't take our weapons, sir."

Treize poked his head out of the tent and looked to his left, pretending to see Galanos collecting weapons down the line. In the moonlight, he looked drained and washed-out, like a specter terrorizing the grounds with mind games and cunning. He stuck his head back in the tent. "Major Galanos is two tents over. He will certainly vouch for me, but, as you can guess, we're trying to collect rifles as quickly as possible."

"Then we can wait for him." He was probably only about seventeen years old, likely fresh out of the academy. I couldn't decide if he was playing tough because that was his temperament or because he thought it was what Treize would want to hear.

"Look, I understand your skepticism, but this is serious. I need your weapons now." Treize reached into the tent insistently.

In that moment, I saw Treize's actions and words for what they were: he was letting off steam, tempering his frustration with the system he lived and worked in. Treize cyclically grew aggravated with Romefeller, the Alliance, and every other governing body that used soldiers, entertained themselves with soldiers, and bet the future on soldiers without holding themselves to the high standards of soldiers. They lied through their veneers about their intentions, their values and goals, and Treize was a quick student. He honed such a talent for deception that he fooled even the granddaddies of the sport into trusting his allegiance, a ruse that was tiresome and emotionally taxing. He despised both the players and the game he played so well, and he swore to me that, one day, it would all be worth it. "Just a little more time," he would say, "and you'll see, Milliardo."

Treize loved his soldiers and he was proud to be one. He hated being used and he hated seeing his men and women used, even though his logic knew the necessity of it. He had to bide his time, position his pieces before he could enact his horrible, sweeping plans, and though he bore it with scarcely a complaint, he hated the wait. This camp raid, this petty stab at his colleague, was one of the small ways he coped with the deficit of political heft and the impatience he suffered. He'd bury them all one day, just like he buried the Stambaughs. He knew it. I knew it. His soldiers, somehow, knew it. We were just waiting, holding our breaths, praying we'd end up on the right side of him, whispering a word of condolence to those who would not.

"I can't give you my weapon, sir."

"De Luca, come on!" the other soldier pleaded, panic-stricken.

"He doesn't have the password."

"I don't give a shit about your password," Treize spat. "I want to know why you are disobeying a direct order from an officer of a rank you will clearly never attain."

Out of the corner of my eye, I could see our soldiers trading incredulous looks. Most probably didn't realize that their commander was play-acting and very likely enjoying himself enormously. I was certainly amused by his theatrics, regardless of what the flat line of my lips suggested.

"You may outrank me, sir, but you do not outrank my commander. I have specific orders from him not to hand my weapon over to anybody who doesn't have the proper credentials. If you think I'm going to give you my rifle just because you burst into my tent and pitch a fit, you're mistaken, sir."

"Name and rank."

"De Luca, Franco. Lieutenant, sir."

In an instant, Treize drop his veneer of outrage. "All right, then. Carry on."

I felt a pinch at my wrist, as did every other soldier in our company who had successfully set their chronometers. We met at Charlie point and hauled it back to Bravo, where Hernandez and Krieger met us, brandishing Alpha Company's flag with wide smiles.

Back at the encampment, Treize and I conducted an after action review, deeming the mission not only successful, but tremendously well executed. Despite the late hour, everybody was keyed up and proud of a job well done. Treize didn't bother tempering their joy with a lesson about humility, for it was as much his victory as the platoon's, and he was feeling pretty good about it. As a reward to them, he didn't break formation for privacy when Major Galanos radioed him on the battalion frequency and called him every derogatory name he could think of, some of which made the lieutenants scoff and bristle. Treize let his soldiers listen to what bad leadership sounded like: overinflated and graceless. That was the real lesson of the exercise.

About an hour before the sun came up, Treize and I sat hunched across from each other in his tiny two-man bivouac tent, the same as every other soldier's, planning for the day's return to standard billeting. We were in a casual state of battle dress, with our helmets and blouses placed neatly in the corner, leaving us in our substantially cooler t-shirts. Until that training exercise, I had no idea that Croatia could get so hot in the summer.

"The first thing I'm going to do when we get back is arrange Lieutenant De Luca's transfer to our unit," Treize stated, shining his red flashlight on the map we had spread out between us.

"Don't you think you should let Galanos have at least one capable soldier?" I replied, watching his finger trace a line across the paper.

He made an amused sound. "Do you think that every soldier that comes into my unit is a good soldier when they arrive?"

I knew the answer to that. Treize didn't need to recruit the best soldiers in the world; he created the best soldiers in the world. His had the rarely-matched ability to turn ordinary men and women into extraordinary ones, simply by developing their skills and giving them confidence in their abilities and commander. These were the most basic principles of leadership, entailing nothing more extraordinary than firm and constant reinforcement, and yet so few leaders had the strength of will and character to walk the path that Treize did. For many, the lure of nurturing one's own resume through personal accomplishments was greater than the perceived rewards of nurturing inexperienced soldiers into professionals. If they realized that the latter directly augmented the former, well, there would have been more Treize Khushrenadas in the ranks.

"You, of course," he continued, "are an obvious exception. I never have to worry about you, Zechs." This was a flat-out lie. He always worried. He looked up from the map and one corner of his mouth curled upward. With that crooked smirk and a faint smudge of dirt on his chin, he looked about two ranks younger.

I resisted the temptation to succumb to his un-showered charms and didn't waste a breath before barreling back into the hazardous conversational territory of the day prior. His last comment seemed the perfect segue.

"And yet, I have to worry about you." He had nowhere to run, and kicking me out of his tent was something he was going to have to do quite literally.

He shook his head wearily and looked back down at the map. "Not this again. I wish you would let it go."

"You were a dropped pen away from getting a bullet in the back of the head. And what's worse, you refuse to take any precautionary measures." I glowered at him, desperately wishing that he would validate my very legitimate concerns.

"That is not correct. I gave approval for additional rooftop snipers -"

"Hire more snipers to kill snipers. Brilliant. Just brilliant"

"- but I will not be forced into the basement like some disobedient child."

"It's not a fucking punishment!"

"Let it go. Please."

'Please'? Something wasn't right. Where was that severe bullheadedness he'd been so liberal with at the sand table earlier?

I was surprised when the harshness of my glare didn't bore a hole clean through his skull, like the bullet that nearly killed him. "What is _wrong_ with you?"

Treize wiped his brow with the back of his hand and sighed. "You're exhausting me."

I knew as much, but I couldn't reign myself in. I couldn't help it… In my mind I pictured Treize's body slumped over his desk, blood spilling out of him in a wide, terrible pool. I imagined getting a phone call saying that somebody had found him like that, which would lead me to horrifying realization that the last words I had said to him that day were the last I would say to him ever -

Jesus…I think it was a joke about some wing-nut politician that I loathed. That could have been the enduring legacy of our relationship - my asinine commentary on some greasy, worthless, pus-bag-of-a-statesman. The worst part was that I didn't even particularly care for politics.

That appalling thought, coupled with the angry adrenaline coursing through my body, made me stupid with emotion. I took Treize's head between my hands and forced him to look me in the eye.

"I will not apologize for wanting you to live, Treize." I tilted his head and hissed angrily in his ear, "If you can't understand my feelings, then maybe you're not as smart as I thought."

It was then that I felt the heat on his face and wetness on my fingers. It was hot outside, but it certainly wasn't sweat-bullets-hot. I pulled back and pressed my hand to his forehead and very suddenly forgot that I was upset.

"You…" I tried to wipe the beaded moisture away with my hand, pushing it into his hairline and causing his bangs stick up. He'd cut it shorter than usual for ground training because he couldn't stand the way it felt when it was dirty. "Treize, you're burning up."

"It's nothing to worry about. We're leaving in a few hours, anyway."

"Yeah, leaving for a 15K march." I rummaged through his nearby duffle bag, pulled a t-shirt out, and pressed it to my face to smell. Clean enough. He let me dab away as much sweat as I could from his face and neck, the lack of resistance convincing me that he felt as terrible as he very suddenly looked. "How long have you felt ill?"

"Not long." His hand brushed mine before he took the shirt away from me and tossed it back into the open bag from which I'd taken it. He missed. "It's nothing."

I stared. With the redness that the flashlight was casting, he looked like he was on fire, engulfed in hot sickness. He was rarely ill, gifted, among many other things, with a robust immune system. But when he got sick, he got sick as a dog, the flat on your back, sleep in the bathroom sort of sick.

"You can't march. The men will notice." I tried to appeal to his interests, which, above all, typically consisted of putting on the most perfect performance possible. "I can lead them. Make up some excuse to leave early. Tell them that General Catalonia sent - "

"I will do no such thing. I will be fine until we get to the airfield. I just..." His touched his mouth as though trying to physically block any further admissions of weakness. When his gaze fell on mine, his eyes were pleading. "Give me two hours?"

I frowned and felt his hand on mine again. I nodded in defeat, knowing that I was fighting a losing battle even while my opponent was expending most of his energy in the struggle to keep from passing out.

Later, he'd persevere through the entire march, his only visible symptom the sickly pallor of his skin. After a day in the infirmary, he'd spend the week on mandatory quarters, sleeping like a dead man, full of antibiotics and whatever food I could get him to eat. Later, as he began to feel better, he would occupy his time complaining about overly-cautious physicians and wasted time, all the while asking me for updates on the unit. Each time I'd refuse his request, he'd declare with a small, sleepy smile that I was impossible sometimes.

"And I appreciate your concern, I really do, but if somebody wants to kill me badly enough, a few feet of concrete isn't going to stop them. You know that as well as I do."

"You could at least try, Treize." I wanted to pull away, but at that moment I felt so much affection for that hand on mine that my petulance was thrown to the wayside where it belonged.

"If anything ever happened to me, you would be fine. I have no doubts about that."

"Why are you telling me this?" I whispered roughly.

"Because it's the truth."

He leaned in close and kissed me on the forehead, keeping his illness away from my lips, though I would have taken it wholly upon myself to spare him. Any day. In an instant. If that were my hell instead of this, burning with fever so that Treize wouldn't be sick, so that he wouldn't be dead, I would live it gladly and forever.

xxx

I was in my room remembering all of this, waiting for the sun to go down. I'd spent a rare day inside lying on my bed with my arm flung over my eyes to block out the light. When dusk settled in, I let my heavy limb fall to my side, dimly noting that my sleeve was damp.

It was September 9th, Treize's birthday. He would have been 25 years old.

How impossibly young to be mourned.

Reflecting on the tone of my day, I was having my doubts about what he had said in Croatia. Nine months after his death, I still felt the pitiless ache of sadness every single day. It was a different sensation from when I was grieving for my parents. Their death burrowed under my skin and permeated every cell of my body like a thick and virulent cancer. It grew dark and metastasized into rage, fueling my base desires for revenge.

Treize's death, after the initial cataclysmic shock and denial subsided, drained me. It was a slow and dangerous leak in my fortitude that had the insidious twin effect of mimicking recovery. Over the summer I had pulled myself out of the mire and made an earnest attempt to integrate into life again. I had gained weight, started taking care of myself, tended to an occupation of sorts, and had a fairly substantive connection to another person. I don't know why, but I assumed that grief was formulaic, with a distinct ascension, climax, and recession. I wasn't prepared to be propelled back into heartbreak by a mere date on the calendar.

I felt depleted. Tired. Incurable. My anger with myself and Treize had worn as thin as my optimism. I thought it ironic that such a strong emotion had so little tenacity. It used to be the driving force that kept me fighting when all I wanted to do was throw my mask in a dumpster, muster out of service, and fade into obscurity - with him, of course. I hadn't realized how close we'd become, anger and I, until I could no longer hold onto it.

Some would call such things progress. To me, it felt like a spiritual deadening. Then again, the only form of spirituality I'd ever subscribed to - falsely, I might add - was the doctrine of soldierly virtue, but I was no longer a soldier and no longer a ronin. I was, however, still very much a villain. With my credit, I'd purchased a computer and spent much of the first week-and-a-half of September familiarizing myself with the world that Treize and I had helped create.

The ESUN: unified but not, many but one. As Romefeller's chief representative, my sister's bold but frightfully ill-conceived dissolution of national borders had been disastrous, and the ESUN took this knowledge to heart when it wrote its charter. There were countries still, and colonies maintained their autonomy, but participation in the centralized government was mandatory, not optional or bound by club rules as it'd been with the Alliance. The new government, legislated by the new ESUN Senate, was configured to be the most fair and practical way for all nations and colonies to meet and talk and vote. The sum of its fairness and practicality was outshone only by the majestic stateliness of Senate Headquarters, where dignified men and women in dignified clothes gathered with dignified civility to write the future. Hm... That sounds familiar.

The first few months of the new year had been good, characterized by equal parts solemn remembrance and ecstatic revelry, replete with ambitious marketing and electioneering celebrating the New Dawn for Humanity. Money was made. People partied. Humankind was Reborn - that was the word on the street, the word people were sold, the word they clung onto like a lifeboat in a storm of unprocessed shock and disbelief. Had the war actually happened? Yes, yes, so far away. Time to move on into the brave new future.

But as the fervor over the future's promise subsided, old irritations reared between nations. The transition to actual democracy, particularly in Europe, was a convoluted and strained one. For the last handful of decades, Europe had been the de facto oligarchy Romefeller masquerading as a confederacy of democratic nations. The people were beginning to discover that real democracy is a chore, and that diplomacy is not a series of fetes and cocktail parties, but rather a string of misunderstanding and minor calamities interspersed with nightmarishly inconvenient bureaucratic hurdles.

Disillusion crept in from the fringes of the media. A few intrepid commentators began to question the feigned social evolution that the new government was touting. "Is humanity really any different after the war than before?" they asked. Slowly, people expressed their dissent. At the onset, they were cautious. Fearful of uprooting a utopia that did not truly exist, they stuck to delicate phrasing and argued in a most academic and genteel fashion. But it didn't take long for strong and dynamic personalities to emerge, and these imperious talking heads urged free expression and purgation of feelings. They encouraged grief, remorse, and, most importantly, anger. Everything that the ESUN had tried to sweep under the rug, like so many discarded mobile suits and soldiers, flew full-on back into the faces of everyone. And it wasn't pretty.

Enter the infamous Milliardo Peacecraft, scapegoat of the new era, punching bag for the emotionally stifled. As we had pegged ourselves in our last days, my posthumous reputation was the polar opposite of Treize's. While people erected monuments and dedicated academic halls to him, they burned effigies of me. While they extolled his selflessness and whitewashed the unsightly transgressions of his past, they cursed my birth and dredged up every slanderous morsel they could, provided it didn't incriminate or besmirch Treize's name - a caveat that would (mostly) save our relationship from exploitation.

The rage against me manifested as a flagrant smear campaign that afforded the public the catharsis they craved. Of course, they lamented the fact that I was dead and could not be tried for crimes against humanity. Over and over again commentators regurgitated futile and furious wishes for my survival, devising fictional plots outlining exactly how I would be tried and for what crimes.

There was, however, one lone voice that rallied to my defense, though it's doubtful that he was doing it out of altruism. His name was Andrew James, an Australian journalist who took great pleasure in bucking against the mainstream. He introduced to the public such items as my true civilian kill tally (lower than advertised), and correctly postulated that I had purposefully picked one of the least-populated places on the planet - Siberia, with the dual intent of affronting Treize personally - to fire the Libra cannon at. This fact surprises some people. Yes, I did have some measure of control over myself at the time. No, I wasn't a blind, heartless, bloodthirsty monster. Not completely. "For a paragon of evil, he was awfully polite," James remarked in his satirically-slanted column.

I don't know about "polite," but I did give my actions _some_ thought.

Mr. James equated the public's loathing of me to fear of the boogie man, wrought out of a knee-jerk defensive reaction to being scared out of their minds. He also posed questions about why Quatre Winner's destruction of multiple populated colonies was rewarded with astronomically high stock prices and billions of dollars in revenue while people demanded my head and expressed regret that I had survived the Alliance invasion of Sanc. I had mixed feelings about Mr. James; part of me was grateful for the consideration, no matter how snide, while another part wished that he would allow me to be plainly hated. Shades of gray confuse, and there was already a surplus of confusion for the ESUN to combat.

How funny, how fitting that the one man who defended me was nearly as much of a sarcastic asshole as I was.

I was shocked to see that another absolved criminal, Anne Une, was the head of the new Preventer agency. When I'd known her, she was barely able to command a single unit without lapsing into overzealousness, tactlessness, gracelessness, or, later, fits of schizophrenia. Treize's unyielding trust in her had always been a point of contention between us, but she'd served him dutifully with every ounce of ability she had. A rare quality such as that would never go unrewarded by him. As far as I could gauge, she seemed to have pulled herself together into a competent leader. In short, she was doing much better than I was.

I could search the news only for so long before growing listless from the repetition and negativity. It hurt to be hated, even if it was what people felt they needed. The most I could wish for - and I did so with utmost sincerity - was that Relena would one day forgive me for what I'd done. Though I barely knew her, I loved her tremendously. The feeling of holding her in my arms on Libra was imprinted deeply in my heart, something I bore modest hope of doing again. Just once more, if that was all I could have.

When I crawled out of bed on September 10th after a long night spent ruminating, I felt the old familiar grip of resentment tightening around me as I bitterly blamed humanity for not trying harder. Treize died for them. All of them. All of us. And we couldn't even keep it together for a solid year. What was everything for if not for just a little peace? Two years. Three. Five. Surely a hundred thousand lives were enough to buy at least that. Of course, nothing at that time had happened to disprove the finality of The Last War (as it was known in some optimistic circles), and yet I couldn't dismiss the simple fact that nothing fundamental had changed. There were still soldiers, men and women floating adrift in roles given to them as a consolation, and there were still weapons - many weapons, enough to kill everybody if deployed creatively enough.

What had changed? The unity of the government? All it took was a stiff breeze to topple the United Nations of the prior era. How was the ESUN Senate any different? How were we any safer from ourselves? How were we any more evolved? How could so much doubt thrive in a world of the public majority's own making?

What the hell had really changed?

The silence was painful. It was a pessimistic time. I missed Treize badly, and without anger to coddle me, I retreated into cynicism.

That morning I dressed in jeans and a light jumper and made my habitual trek up the hill to help Vadimas load produce into his truck for market. I found that most of my ill feelings held up rather poorly to a distracting day's work, even if my nightly musings regularly reincarnated them. The fact that my landlord was always so kind, beyond all rationality, also took the harsher wind out of my sails.

As I crested the hill, I saw Vadimas standing in the middle of the beet field next to an unnatural-looking pile of dirt that I hadn't seen the day before. His hands were on his hips and he was shaking his head, laughing. I ran into the field and joined him at the rim of a three-meter-wide crater that held a heap of charred, twisted metal.

"Would you look at that!" the old man said, bending over in obvious discomfort to get a closer look at the object.

I crouched down next to it and ran my hand over the blackened surface, smooth from the friction of atmospheric entry. It looked like it had once been a single sheet that had been bent by explosive heat. Perhaps it was the perfectionist in me, but I felt a pressing need to reshape it. I stood and wedged the heel of my boot into a crevice while pulling on the opposing end to unroll it. The metal bit into my palms, but I didn't stop when I saw the progress I was making.

"Don't hurt yourself, young man," Vadimas implored as he watched me wrestle that space trash like a frantic scavenger.

When I finally wedged it open, I could see the pristine, unscorched green-brown paint job that confirmed my suspicions. I could hear my blood pounding a steady tempo of anticipation in my ears as I knelt once more to inspect it.

WF-02MD-43. One of my Virgo II units.

It was only a single, thin sheet of superficial armor plating, but it was industry standard to label every single assembly piece to make identification possible in the event of an accident. Touching it with my bare hands was surreal, like I had recovered a prehistoric artifact instead of a part from a weapon I had deployed less than a year prior. My fingers traced along the indents of the serial number as I recalled the frightful might of those abominable suits. I'd always despised the mobile dolls based on principles that I'd adopted under Treize's tutelage, which made me wonder why I'd used them. Perhaps I really had wanted to play into his scenario after all… God, why couldn't I remember my own intentions?

"Do you recognize it?"

Unaware of the contradiction between the way I was caressing the metal and my words, I lied.

"No."

"Are you sure, Erik?"

All at once, the ridiculousness of my hiding my identity became apparent. Like an absurd metaphysical sign, that hunk of metal jettisoned from lower orbit was a reminder that the Milliardo Peacecraft of the White Fang was the same Milliardo Peacecraft who grew up in a palace, the same Milliardo Peacecraft who lived beneath Zechs Merquise, and the same Milliardo Peacecraft who spent his days brooding and picking vegetables on a farm in northern France. Why was I still wasting energy fighting it? Why was I still lying to myself and to others? Why was I scared of the consequences of reconciling my identity?

"That's not my name."

"Well, of course it isn't!" Vadimas replied, chuckling, holding his modest belly with both hands as though he couldn't contain his amusement.

I stood slowly and stared at his smiling face, speechless. He was shorter than I, hunched from age and what I assumed was a lifetime of hard labor. His eyes gleamed.

"Don't act so surprised, Mr. Peacecraft. I'm not as senile as I seem!"

I struggled to formulate a reply, averting my gaze to the scrap pile, then to the distant fields, then back to the man's cheery face. "How… long have you known, Mr. Kazlauskas?"

"Since the moment I saw you on my stoop back in February." He gave me a good clap on the shoulder. "I knew you'd tell me when you were ready!"

I shook my head. It was the only thing I could do.

"Now that we've got that out of the way, let me show you something!"

He took me by the wrist and pulled me towards his house. I felt an irrational desire to stay with the Virgo scrap, but that would have led to a pointless exercise in self-recrimination. Later that day, I went back to the site to find that the armor had been removed and the hole covered. I never saw it again.

He brought me to a door that I'd always assumed led to a root cellar beneath the house. From his pocket he pulled out a set of keys and, after some fumbling, unlocked the padlock. We walked down a narrow and steep set of stairs into a wall of cool and musty air. With the flick of a switch, the room lit up.

To my right was a heavy work bench that was strewn with electronics parts and metal casings. On the wall were tacked-up blueprints, multiple layers superimposed upon one another. To my left was a smaller work bench that held a computer terminal which had been gutted. Next to that was a drafting table upon which more blueprints sat. I was immediately drawn to the larger of the two work stations, where I picked up a small soldering gun that was lying next to a motherboard. It felt like a pistol.

"This is my workshop! Here, sit!" he said, taking the gun out of my hand and seating me on a stool. He then rummaged through a small closet near the stairs and came back with a portfolio that was nearly as big and thick as his torso.

He dropped it on the table in front of me and motioned for me to open it up. Inside were paper clippings in multiple languages, slim technical manuals, hand-drawn sketches, and packets of operating procedures branded with the OZ Research and Development unit crest. Many screamed "CLASSIFIED." Of particular interest to me was a picture of eight men of ages ranging from approximately 25 to 60. A couple were smiling, and the others ran the gamut from blasé to sternly authoritative. One of the two smiling men I immediately recognized as Howard. The other, the oldest-looking of the bunch, was undeniably Vadimas Kazlauskas.

I looked at my landlord, his face a moderately aged transposition of the photograph. He was grayer, balder, and wrinklier than his younger self, but he still seemed to have maintained the same effervescence.

"You knew Howard," I remarked, examining the other faces to see if I could identify them. I couldn't.

"Oh, did you know him, too? That son of a bitch owes me money!" he complained with a raucous laugh. "You never played cards with him, did you?"

I shook my head. I think I might have liked to, though. "Were you in OZ?"

"Oh, no!" he exclaimed, horror-struck, as though I'd asked him if he was presently wearing women's undergarments. "I was a contractor. We all were." He pointed to the photograph.

I was captivated - a stirring, electrifying feeling, like a young boy's excitement over a fast car or a jet aircraft. It had been a long time since I'd felt that way; I welcomed it, if only as something different from malaise.

"Did you work on the Tallgeese?"

"We were her fathers," Vadimas said, once again gesturing to the picture. "I was a computer engineer. Oh! You'll like this!"

He retrieved an old notebook computer from beneath a crinkled pile of papers and brought it over to me. He closed the portfolio and set it aside, giving me the computer to hold. When I turned it on, the screen flicked to life and displayed the familiar startup sequence of the Tallgeese's operating system. It was strange to watch the artful play of code and graphic without the accompanying sensations of her thrusters in my hands and the sweet smell of oil and old leather. Even still, it hypnotized me, wooed me, and made me miss her just a little.

"We all played an important part in building her. I designed her brain." There was a note of pride in his voice, and perhaps an undertone of that same nostalgia I was experiencing as I watched the program boot up. I had never seen this side of Mr. Kazlauskas before, one that resonated strongly with me. It was a commonality that I hadn't anticipated at all.

"I loved my job," he continued, "but it was wrong." He killed the power on the laptop, suddenly remorseful, as though he regretted showing me his work, and took the computer away from me.

I spun around on the stool and watched him retreat back to that small closet. "How so?"

When he rejoined me, he was once again his jovial self. "Ah, don't listen to me! I'm just an old fool reminiscing. Here's what I really wanted to show you."

He directed my attention to the blueprints that he had tacked up on the wall. I scrutinized his face, looking for signs of what he had been on the verge of explaining to me, but he'd masterfully masked all traces of shadow.

"This was my last project before I retired. I never got to finish it. And now," he held up one of his hands in front of my face, slowly flexing fingers knotted by arthritis, "I'm not young anymore. But you," he grasped onto my wrist and patted the top of my hand, "you have good hands."

Good hands? I barely recognized them. They were different hands from those I had in OZ and the White Fang. They were the unremarkable hands of a young man instead of the calloused, skilled hands of a professional soldier. I wasn't sure if they suited me.

"What is it?"

"It's a wireless scanner, but with much better amplification! You could eavesdrop on the colonies from a hundred stories below ground."

I arched an eyebrow. "Those are illegal." Hugely, as in spend-a-decade-in-prison illegal.

He waved a hand at me. "Bah! I don't mean anything by it. I just want to know whether or not it works. I spent a long time on the design. Wouldn't you be curious?"

I was already curious. The pile of parts on the workbench reminded me of the scattering of metal beams, nuts, and bolts that composed my childhood construction set. I wanted to put them together, pull order from the chaos. At any rate, I would also need something to occupy my time as winter drew near. What did I have to lose?

"I suppose it doesn't matter if a dead man breaks a law, does it?"

Vadimas grinned broadly. "Let me show you these plans..."


	7. You Were Never Quite the Same

Title: Limbo  
Chapter: 7/12: I Hate to See You Sad  
Pairing: Past Treize/Zechs (made present-tense via flashbacks)  
Spoliers: Series, EW  
Warnings: Death themes, male/male sexual situations, foul language, grief, angst, cynicism, debatable instances of sap. Flashbacks throughout. Military-ness. Rated M for swears and darkness  
Disclaimer: I don't own any part of GW. No monies have been or will be made off of this thing.

Please see Limbo 1 for very important notes.

xxx

The decision to open my front door and walk to Mr. Kazlauskas' cellar was not one made lightly on that particular October day. From my sitting room, I'd spent close to an hour chewing absently at my breakfast of bread with butter while watching the blustery wind violently whip at the trees and flagging vegetables outside my rental. The temptation to forgo the short journey was overpowering, and I wondered what my problem was. How was it that I had endured season after season of brutal Sancian and Russian winters without so much as a snivel of discontent, and yet I was seriously considering cloistering myself indoors because of a small wind storm?

I watched a tarp I had never seen before fly past my window. So, fine, the storm wasn't exactly small, but the principle of letting the weather dictate my schedule was more grating with every moment my mind entertained it. I muttered to myself that I was being silly and licked a spot of butter off my thumb. So long as I was not overrun by legions of rogue tarps, an image that struck me as quite hilarious, there wasn't a good reason to put my project on hold any longer than necessary. My scandalous little receiver. I suppose it was really Vadimas', but I had taken ownership of it rather soon after I cleaned up the workspace, wrote the specifications into the latest CAD program, and ordered all of the parts. My mood brightened every time I heard the rumble of the delivery truck as it rolled down the drive, bringing with it wires, tools, transistors, and other miscellany. I ordered so much that I had to get another prepaid card, so I guess I literally did own it.

After cleaning up my plate, I put on my coat and, after a moment spent lamenting the fact that I had no hood, tied my hair back into a low ponytail. I had a damn hard enough time keeping it looking decent without courting a wind-blown rat's nest of tangles. I'd almost cut it all off the month before, the thought arising spontaneously the moment I awoke one day, lingering naggingly like a constant pinch at the back of my brain. I'd even gone so far as to borrow a pair of scissors from Vadimas and lock myself in his bathroom, where I stood in front of the mirror, the bulk of it held in a tight, determined fist, the decisive point of the cutting tool ghosting over the place I planned to make the cut. It felt like suicide, and, in the end, I chickened out.

How many times had Treize run his hands through my hair, the very same hair that I'd nearly cut off? I'd grown it out since I'd known him, only trimming it to keep it from becoming inconveniently long. There was a part of him there, a preference, a compliment. He marveled at it, teased me for my dedication to it, gathered it to the side to kiss the back of my neck... No. I couldn't do it and for all the wrong reasons.

Walking up the long, slow slope of the road, I faced the powerful wind head-on. It was like walking through sand, so much effort for so little progress. My eyes watered and I tucked my chin behind the upturned collar of my coat. The sky was a gloomy shade of gray, the clouds heavy and low. I thought about Germany, and my mind labored to determine exactly why. Parties in Bremen... holiday in Munich... training in Berlin... funerals in -

My breath stilled. That was it.

xxx

It was an oppressively overcast and cold day, the sky hanging so low that it weighed tangibly on the crowd of mourners gathered at Dorumer Neufeld military cemetery. Five soldiers, five headstones, five more names for Treize's list. These Specials officers, all under the age of 30, had died helping the Alliance stave off a pro-colonial rebellion in Portugal. The soldiers' mobile suits had been consumed by a spectacular fireball created when the rebels blew the reactor of a stolen Leo, setting off a chain reaction that obliterated one of the country's biggest power stations and everything else within a two kilometer radius. The three Alliance soldiers had survived because of their tactical support positions in the rear, a fact that we acknowledged with curt nods of understanding to their faces and caustic accusations of cowardice behind their backs.

At that time, the mission was the single largest loss of life in the brief history of the Specials. This death toll was so light compared to what the Corps would see after Operation Meteor, but five was considered devastating back then, as it should have been. Even one was one too many. Somewhere along the way, we lost our perspective.

I inferred that the magnitude of the Portugal Incident was the reason Treize chose to attend that particular memorial service, as professional constraints typically prevented him from doing otherwise. As a freshly minted colonel, he had assumed a staggering amount of responsibility, taking the late General Catalonia's position as official commander of the Specials, courtesy of Romefeller's enthusiastic reassurances to Marshall Noventa and the other Alliance bigwigs. They agreed only because of Treize's demonstrated dedication to R&D and Training and Indoctrination, doing work that could be easily quantified and presented as a colorful and impressive graph that went up and up and up. With this promotion, the entire world was his new jurisdiction, where he had over 38,000 Specials officers planted in over 340 Alliance bases and outposts. On the world map, his units linked together in a dense thicket of military might, all poised to mobilize within minutes of Treize's command. If the Alliance wasn't unsettled by their decision, they weren't thinking clearly.

I was there because the deceased soldiers were attached to my unit in Braga. I hadn't led the deadly mission, but after reading a copy of the Alliance command report Treize had obtained for me, I wished once more that I had. I was appalled at the shamefully sophomoric execution of the attack, which played out with the over-compensatory carelessness of an unruly child. I'd digested the contents of the report with a hard scowl on my lips, mulling over the same tired point that such a loss of life at the hands of an incompetent tactician was completely unnecessary. I could have been there. I should have been there, and I should have been leading them.

This was my chief grievance with the Specials' supplementation of traditional Alliance units. At the beginning of the Specials/Alliance era of cooperation, and I use this term loosely because they were still believed to be two parts of the same organization at the time, it was only under the rarest and emergent of circumstances that a mission was planned and commanded by a better trained, better equipped Specials officer. The Alliance preferred to be in control, and Treize preferred to let them believe that they were. That would change later as combat deaths increased to "unacceptable" levels, when Treize's new status would sway the Alliance towards a policy of command relinquishment - pragmatically euphemized as "reallocation." The command assignments wouldn't begin transitioning in earnest until after that funeral, though, much too late for scores of Specials officers who died long before they should have.

We arrived separately, his rank wedging itself prominently between us. From the top of the hill, I watched him step out of his bulletproof sedan, his gloved hand waving off a young woman in a pant suit who had approached him from one of the vehicles trailing his. The look on her face was one of disappointed acquiescence. I wondered what he'd denied her. As leader of the prestigious Specials Corps, he had a full detail of soldiers, security officers, and OZ-employed civilians who coordinated his every official movement. Each flight, each meeting, each handshake was painstakingly planned down to the minute - at least, as much as reason and the laws of probability allowed. There were still enough surprises to keep him entertained and his staff perpetually on the verge of nervous breakdown.

He looked sharp and commanding as he strode up the hill with long, purposeful steps that miraculously did not make him appear inappropriately self-important. He carried instead an air of calm sobriety that radiated and permeated, a trait that made him different from other commanders in that he didn't unnerve his subordinates unless he intended to. I caught his eye and he afforded me nothing more than a small nod as he fell into formation down the line next to Federation Colonel Diallo. I nodded back and tried not to look disappointed. This, our first meeting in months, was even more anticlimactic than I'd pessimistically predicted. I shouldn't have expected anything more than what I got, especially considering the nature of the event, but still. It hurt. Understanding it didn't make it any easier.

Dozens of soldiers and civilians formed a large semicircle around the five plots. Every soldier was decked out in winter formal dress, cloaks draped over our right shoulders, scabbards sheathed at our left hips. Such a silly accessory, really, especially at a funeral. My mask allowed me to watch Treize without drawing attention, including his, so that's exactly what I did. It was wonderful to finally see him in person, despite the tepid greeting. He looked good to me, as he always did, but by pre-promotion comparison he appeared pale, preoccupied, and encumbered. And that was only after three months. I wondered how he would look in a year, pleasantly unaware that in a year's time he would be dead.

In those days, I had frustratingly little face-time with him, if one could count vid-phone conversations as face-time. As Major Chernov's executive officer at the Braga base, I vid-phoned in once a week for command debriefings that were all business and never private, as he was always distracted by some elbow or shirt cuff in his periphery waiting to hand him something to sign or tell him something that was no doubt of crucial importance. I would have loved to admit that we had a sexy long distance relationship, but the truth was that he worked every night until he crashed, only to wake up the next morning and do it all over again. Most personal conversations took place at depressingly infrequent intervals and at odd hours of the night, when Treize was not at his finest and sometimes fell asleep mid-call, leaving me to wish in silence that I was there with him, even if it was just to watch him sleep from across the room rather than from across the continent.

Three of the deceased five soldiers were presumed actively Roman Catholic, so a priest was obtained to deliver the invocation. He then read a passage from a bible that I was entirely and unabashedly unfamiliar with, the words arcane and meaningless to me. Treize had on several occasions falsely claimed that he couldn't understand the bible unless it was read in Russian (as though anybody really understands the bible in any language), though he probably could have at least named the book from which the passage was pulled. I know my parents would have been disappointed with my disdain of anything that functioned under the pretense of holiness. My adolescent worshipping of Treize certainly wasn't rooted in anything even remotely sacred. I'm sure they would have been pretty disappointed about that, too. I'd like to think that my mother would have understood, but I suppose I'll never know.

The priest's words were wasted on me and likely on Treize beyond some cheap nostalgic value, and I wondered if anybody was actually finding comfort in this ritualistic recitation. Did those people believe that the soldiers' deaths were meaningful, an act of their benevolent God calling them home instead an act of desperate brutality aided by grossly incapable leadership? Did they believe that it was not the intractable principles of the rebels that caused the explosion but rather the depraved hand of Satan? To me, these religious explanations were excuses, illusions, delusions, a denial of the darkness in the heart of man. I've always believed that humans are horrible enough without needing help from fabricated third parties.

A man in the crowd stared at me. He was a civilian, perhaps a family member. The look on his face was one of equal parts repulsion and perplexity, and I found it curious that so many people had identical reactions to my appearance. I should have taken pictures of all of them and pasted them together in a collage of disgust. I never had ill feelings towards these blatant gawkers, because I truly did look something like a sideshow spectacle. My helmet resembled a medieval relic, the femininity of my hair clashed confusingly with the masculine line of my jaw, and my uniform was the boldest and bloodiest shade of red conceivable. For such a solemn occasion, I wished I could have worn something less conspicuous. I felt like a distraction.

The priest finished his passage and the crowd muttered "Amen." Then the father made the expected announcement that Treize wanted to say a few words - expected because he took every opportunity he could to make the Specials look favorable, not only to the public, but to his own soldiers as well. He had to remind them why they fought and, more importantly, why they must continue to fight harder than ever. It was a most delicate task, for one wrong word could make him appear disconnected, pitying, or weak. I watched him step out of formation and move with somber grace to the front of the group. He carried himself with the gravitas of a leader who singlehandedly represent the might and solidarity of the entire Specials Corps. When exactly had that happened, anyway? He was still the same man he'd been earlier that year, wasn't he?

"Lieutenants Covas, Symanski, De Luca, Captain Jansson, and Major Chernov understood the meaning of serving in the Specials Corps. It means honing strength of character, judgment and discipline. It means giving without asking, striving without reward, and fighting with no guarantee of survival. These soldiers exemplified every ideal of the Corps in their every waking moment, and they died upholding a tradition of sacrifice for the common good."

His gaze slowly swept across the faces of each man, woman, and child at the gathering. People wanted to look at Treize Khushrenada. They wanted to look into his deep blue eyes as much as I did, and they'd all swear they saw something nobody else saw, something intended especially for them. He seemed to recognize the effect he had on people, and he rarely wasted an opportunity to leave an impression on every single person he could. I dislike using such cold terms for him, especially since I understand his true feelings on the matter, but he was working that funeral crowd harder than usual.

"The loss of a soldier in the line of duty is, of course, a mournful event. No amount of posthumous commendation can bring our friends and loved ones back. But we can honor them with our continued courage and with our will to learn from their actions. These five officers have given us the most precious give of inspiration, a gift that we must not take for granted in the days ahead."

Treize's voice had a hypnotic quality, formed in part by the gentle rolling of the faint accent he pointedly refused to correct. He was capable linguist, and I had no doubts that he could speak International Standard without the slightest hint of Russianness, but he chose not to as an act of protest against the military's pressure towards linguistic and cultural assimilation. There was also the Eurocentrism of Romefeller to contend with, an organizational bias that always thought less of the Russians, partly because of their location on the geographic fringe of Europe and partly because the land spans eleven time zones and therefore is one of the most racially and culturally diverse countries in the world. It was both too exotic and too backwater to be truly European, and, above all things, Romefeller was quintessentially, staunchly, stubbornly, traditionally European. The Khushrenada family position in the Foundation was the exception rather than the rule, a position earned by generations of unwavering loyalty - a chain that Treize would one day break amid whispers of "That's what you get from the Russians."

And Russian he was. When I was studying geography as a child, I once asked Treize where the name Khushrenada originated. "I think it migrated up from the southwest," he explained vaguely, his voice just beginning to break, as he gestured in the direction of Azerbaijan and Iran. Treize was unconcerned with the technicalities of his ethnic history. He was Russian, and a Russian is a Russian is a Russian, no matter where his great-great-grandfather came from.

Rolling 'r.' Full-throated 'l.' The crowd looked more relaxed, more at home in their pain, the weight of the sky less of a burden. I felt pride welling up in me, even though nobody knew that Treize was mine.

"These soldiers have shown us how to walk the path of righteousness."

His eyes met mine and there was no sympathy there. I was certain that the crowd in its trance wouldn't notice, but I was more accustomed to Treize's charisma and I could see the truth. The emotion wasn't there because he kept it buried so deeply that it didn't stand a chance to surface. Not then. Not in front of those strangers. He kept it in a tight, dense ball somewhere in his chest, and there were days when he was quiet and he seemed to be looking somewhere far away or far inside, and that's when I knew it was hurting him the most. He wasn't invincible, never truly unshakable. He felt everything, internalized it, and it consumed him.

"So today, let us commit to heart and mind the virtuous deeds of these officers. Let us walk that path they braved, no matter where it leads us. This is not a task for the soldier alone. It is an imploration to all who seek a peaceful future."

He moved the toe of his right boot behind his left heel and smoothly did an about-face. There, he directed ten riflemen to perform a three-volley salute. His firm command voice cut as clearly through the gloom as the jarring crack of every shot. The crowd flinched. A woman shrouded in black began weeping.

The priest capped off the service, asking us to go with God, and then the formation fell apart as people walked to their cars or moved into small circles of conversation. The woman in black who cried during the salute began wailing next to one of the headstones. Two other similarly dressed women huddled around her, holding her, trying vainly to comfort her.

I acknowledged some of my colleagues in my accustomed spare manner as Major Chernov's husband and two daughters walked by without lifting their heads. Discomfort swelled in tune with the grim soundtrack of that woman's crying, upsetting my fellow officers with the unbridled display grief that played out before us. They shifted their weight and tried not to look, but they couldn't stop themselves, as though she were a multiple car pile-up with several casualties. Some appeared to be embarrassed for her, convinced on some cold level that she was making a fool of herself. I stared plainly because my mask made me bold.

Her pain moved me. Knowing intimately the agony of a loved one's death, I admired her precise vocalization of the sensation.

I heard Treize finish up his conversation with Symanski's parents, which they ended by thanking him. Thanking him. For what, I couldn't imagine. He walked up to me, and the small crowd of subordinates I'd been standing with dispersed in a hail of salutes and serious greetings. His uniform was covered with the tiny droplets of mist that clung to us all.

"When will you be returning to Braga?" he asked after we exchanged salutes.

"Not until tomorrow evening, sir."

"Would you join me for dinner tonight?"

Over his shoulder I saw the grieving woman being pulled to her feet by the others. Her howling had quieted to a steady cadence of sobbing.

"Of course, Your Excellency." The title had an unfamiliar taste as it rolled off my tongue. At that point in our careers, he was my commander's commander's commander's commander, which meant that I probably shouldn't even have been talking to him, let alone accepting dinner invites.

His steadily unreadable expression lightened fractionally with my agreement. "Would you like a ride to the base?"

"Thank you, sir."

The stifling rigidity between us felt like a running joke that had turned stale and obligatory. I realized the importance of giving due respect, but the sort of formality that his rank and position demanded had fractured our relationship into two enormously unequal parts: the small, subtle Treize and Milliardo and the loud, pressing Colonel Khushrenada and Captain Merquise. It seemed as though we were perpetually on duty, always apart, always just passing each other with a glance over the shoulder that was too brief to convey any desire. Did he hate it the same way I did? I wondered if he was too busy to have an opinion on anything not work-related.

We started on the pulverized gravel path that led to the road where Treize's driver was waiting. The ocean threw out briny gusts of wind that caught our cloaks and hair and made us look undoubtedly dramatic. It was an unseasonably warm January day, but all things being relative, it was still freezing. Even so, we took our time walking to the car, talking quietly, catching up, relishing a few minutes of privacy.

"I think we should eat off base tonight. There is a Lebanese restaurant in the city that my personal assistant recommended. He hails from the country, so I trust his judgment."

"Personal assistant?" I felt an insidious itch under my skin, something like envy clawing at me from the inside. I was never particularly concerned with Treize's fidelity, not in any serious way. I pouted and stormed in fits of jealousy that were usually the product of something else entirely, but I didn't feel truly threatened by anybody - certainly not his personal assistant, who pissed me off simply because he got paid to spend all day with Treize.

"Lieutenant Nassef. I feel sorry for him, really. I think this assignment must be a form of punishment."

"I would think that directly serving the man who commands the entire Specials Corps would be considered something of an honor."

"He's an officer and a trained pilot. How can you think that he might enjoy keeping my datebook and making arrangements for my dry cleaning? How would you like it?"

"Right now I would demote myself to your full-time washroom attendant if it meant that I got to see you more than once every three months."

He stopped walking and I turned around to face him. I noticed the dark circles that had begun to form under his eyes. He pushed out his chin in a demonstration of mild irritation that only those heavily schooled in his mannerisms would be able to interpret correctly.

"I need you in Braga," he stated bluntly. He put his hand on his hip, a gesture that was intimidating for a reason I couldn't specify. Maybe because it reminded me of my father, which is a perverted association in more ways than one. "But, as you know, there is an open slot now."

"Chernov." A promotion. One of the only hard and fast regulations the Alliance had put on the Specials was a rank quota, creating a sharp, highly competitive bottleneck after the rank of captain. Chernov had been a captain for seven years before earning her promotion, and some suspected that the only reason she received it so quickly was because she was a woman.

"You are overdue."

As a third-year captain, I most certainly was not. "Hardly."

Treize ignored my comment. "I was going to wait to tell you tonight, but…"

"But?"

With the transitory swiftness of a passing cloud, his expression softened. "You look like you could use some good news."

Did I?

"You…"

My brow furrowed as I registered the sound of a woman's voice. Treize turned around towards the direction we were heading from and together we saw the woman in black slowly approaching, unaccompanied. One of her olive-skinned hands held tightly onto her headscarf, which was slipping back despite her effort, exposing thick black hair streaked with grey. She cringed with every step, her left foot dragging, leaving a long trail in the gravel.

"You… It's your fault," she said, her brown, mascara-stained eyes focused on Treize. She pointed a small, accusing finger at him.

A plain-clothed security agent materialized from behind a tree and moved to intercept, but Treize saw him and held out a forbidding hand. Dutifully the man stopped, but left his hand near his concealed sidearm as he kept a sharp eye on his charge.

"What is your name?" Treize asked her, the most basic question that was the least provoking. As logical and practical as he was. He had his voice tuned to a conciliatory frequency, one that was smooth, pleasant, a little tired, and completely contradictory to the mood I could tell he was in.

"You don't deserve to know!" she spat, one side of her mouth drooping. She stopped an arm's length away from him, putting me on edge with her close proximity. I took a step forward, flanking him defensively.

"My son, Franco, is dead because of you." She clenched the folds of her dress in her fists, diffusing angry sorrow through them. The wind took her veil and sent it flying past the security goon, who was likely wondering if he was going to have to shoot a disabled woman at a funeral.

The thin layer of tension in Treize's face dissipated as the situation clarified. "Lieutenant De Luca was a fine soldier, madam. I am deeply sorry for your loss."

"Sorry?!" I could tell she was on to him, attuned to the placating hollowness in that boxed expression of sympathy. "You bewitched him! You filled his head with philosophy and filth. He told me what you said, that death in battle is beautiful! A soldier's greatest achievement!"

I remembered that speech. Far from being Treize's mantra, he had simply said exactly what needed to be said at precisely the moment it was required. He'd been addressing a large crowd of us after a less-than-impressive, three-week-long war game at the European Training Center in Prague. As an official observer, he accused us of hesitation, of questioning of our instincts. Holding back. He told us that we need not fear death, that the dead would always be remembered, his own personal promise. He told us that the willingness to make the ultimate sacrifice is crucial to fighting with the entirety of one's soul. And fear of death, he said, is an idea, and like all ideas, it can be dismissed, replaced with something better, something that strengthens instead of weakens. Death, he did say, can be beautiful, but Treize always much rather preferred his soldiers alive.

She staggered forward and grabbed onto Treize's jacket with her right hand and then, with greater effort, the left. A well-used tissue dropped to the ground. She was short, the top of her head barely coming up to his chin. I wanted to stop this pitiful, horrible, heartbreaking thing, but I didn't. Because I thought she had a point. Because I thought, shamefully, that Treize might have deserved it.

"How beautiful is it, Colonel? Is this what you meant?! Are you proud? Are you happy? He was eighteen years old! My only child, barely old enough to drink a beer!" She pulled on his coat with every interrogative and pushed her fists into his chest with her exclamations.

I couldn't succinctly define the look on Treize's face. His mouth opened and I expected him to say something, but he didn't. Couldn't. His arms hung limply at his sides. He didn't resist her. He was immobilized, disarmed, and, for once, speechless. I wondered how long it had been since anybody had touched him, let alone physically assaulted him.

"You lead these babies into battle, enticing them with fairy tales and fantasies of glory. And then when they die you write them off as examples and spew pretty words about the meaning of their death. So, what does it mean? What does Franco's death mean? There has to be a reason for it!"

"I-I'm so sorry."

I had never heard him stutter. Never. Not once. He'd sooner stay silent for a week than risk the damaging ambiguity of a stutter.

"And you!" She unlatched her good hand from Treize's lapel and pointed at me. The sneer on her lips melted into an uneven, trembling smile that threatened to collapse at any moment. "Franco loved you… you're just a baby, too…"

The expression crumbled as she continued to look at me, and a stream of tears streaked down the side of her face that wasn't paralyzed. I wondered what she would think if she knew how many soldiers Franco's age or younger had died under my command. I suppose it was my age too, wasn't it?

She let go of Treize's jacket and buried her face in her hands. Her narrow shoulders shook as sobs wracked her tiny body, and she looked very small and alone until the two women from earlier dashed to her side, one holding her veil, and escorted her down the gravel path.

I had to consciously will my jaw to unclench. Just a baby, was I? Didn't she realize that Treize was only 23?

He stood absolutely still as he watched them walk to a waiting taxicab. His face was blank, which was unusual. Typically it had a modest orientation towards amusement or bemusement, arrogance or condescension.

"Are you okay?" I asked, laying a hand on his shoulder. I removed it the moment I realized what I'd done.

"I'm fine," he replied flatly. "Let's go back to the base."

In the back seat of the sedan, we sat in silence. Treize stared out of the tinted window. The countryside was glum and withered, but in another few months the rolling hills of the cemetery would be green and fresh from the winter rains.

A driver picked me up at temporary billeting at 18:30 that evening and drove me to the central command center where Treize lived _and_ worked, the poor man. I suppose it was a fortunate arrangement, because if he had to go any farther than a few floors to get to his bed, he probably would have taken up permanent residency in his office. His private living space - generously planned for men and women with families - was two-storey penthouse, an atypically modern arrangement for such a proudly traditional base. Waiting for me at the front entrance of the building was Lieutenant Nassef, an amiable and courteous man with dark, bedroom eyes. He accompanied me to the elevator and, on the way up, enthusiastically recommended the mujadarah for dinner.

"The door is probably unlocked, sir," Nassef said when he let me out on his floor. "I'm sure that, as his friend, you know how he is about security."

As in, he wanted as little to do with it as possible. We had passed so many security checks on the way to the elevator - not to mention the biometric scan and PIN required to even get on the thing - that I supposed locking his door would have been excessive.

I knocked twice before entering the long foyer that led into the primary living area. I took my shoes off and hung my coat next to Treize's on a small waiting coat tree. I walked slowly through each of the rooms, looking for Treize but also familiarizing myself with his amenities. Large kitchen. Dining area. Two guest rooms. Bath. Half-bath. The quarters were furnished in a gaudy baroque style that the Alliance and Romefeller probably thought he would want, a style far too ostentatious for Treize's personal preference. I marveled with a small scrap of pity at how pathetically little they knew about the man at the helm of their most advanced war machine. But then, planned and accidental misinformation surrounded Treize, and living in a nightmarishly garish furniture gallery was a small price to pay for the continued confidentiality of his true feelings and intentions.

I climbed the stairs to the second floor and found him sitting at a large mahogany desk in the study, where he likely worked when he was supposed to be resting. Books filled the shelves on three walls, the Romefeller-supplied volumes with gilded binding appearing out of place among the soft-spined, well-read ones brought from home. I could make out the titles of a few of the classics of literature and philosophy, copies that I'd held in my own hands during hot summers and frigid winters.

It was dark, the only light in the room coming from the quickly receding sun in the west. Treize was hunched over the desk, the thumb and forefinger of his right hand pinched at the bridge of his nose between two closed eyes. Next to him was an empty glass of something that probably hadn't been water. I thought that he might be dozing, as he was capable of sleeping in the oddest of places and positions, a skill he'd no doubt adopted out of necessity rather than choice.

I cleared my throat.

The sound startled him and he hurriedly righted himself. He seemed to fully register my presence only after blinking a few times."That time already?"

I took off my sunglasses and watched the nuances of his facial expression as he gave me the once, twice-over. Despite his distraction, the glint in his eye reassured me that I wasn't the only one who was sick of being apart. I'd put careful consideration into my wardrobe that evening, choosing jeans that fit in just the right way, just the way I knew Treize would like them to fit. That unmistakable surge of interest from him was well worth the small fortune I'd paid for the pants, a cost that seemed ridiculous until I tried them on and saw immediately the appeal of the brand. When I paired them with a long-sleeved, black cotton shirt that fit just as well, casual in the way I preferred to be, I could admit without fear of exaggeration that I looked good.

"And you're still in your uniform," I observed. "Sort of." He had laid his coat, cloak, and cravat on a chaise lounge in the corner of the room, though "threw" seems a more accurate verb for what he'd done to them. I walked over and picked up the jacket and cloak, smoothing over the few shallow wrinkles in both with my hand, and hung them on the rack that was literally only a small step to the right of the chaise. It was unusually careless of him to do that to his uniform. It bothered me.

I heard him push out his chair and watched as he moved towards the adjoining master bedroom. He switched on a couple of lamps along the way, bathing the room in a soft light. "I'm sorry, Zechs. Do you mind waiting while I change?"

He was being unusually polite. Of course I was going to wait for him to change. I was going to try to watch him change, in fact. When he left the study, I poked around and found a decoratively concealed mini-fridge beneath one of the bookshelves. I pulled a predictable bottle of vodka from the freezer, poured approximately a double in the glass Treize had been using, and kicked it back like a shot. Then I walked to the bedroom and took a seat on the edge of the bed. He busied himself for a handful of minutes in the bathroom, running the sink, flushing the toilet, before coming back out and rummaging through his walk-in closet. I heard one boot, then the other drop heavily onto the floor as he pulled them off.

"What is the temperature?"

"Still cold, but you should be fine with your coat." I fell back on the down comforter and turned my head to watch him undress.

He took off his vest, blouse, and undershirt and threw them into the hamper, rendering himself blessedly shirtless. Without the optical illusion afforded by thick epaulets and a flattering cut of cloth, there really wasn't much to Treize. Taller and more conspicuously built, I outweighed him by at least seven or eight kilos, but he was lithe and quick, with the lean, rippling musculature of a puma. It seemed to me that he'd always been that way, though I'm sure he couldn't have been. When he stripped down to his designer briefs, I ogled his tight ass.

I hoped he would forgo the change in wardrobe and come back into the bedroom to screw me, a wish that I was on the verge of stating loudly. I don't know why I so often wanted him that way. The few brief, unintentional times I'd been physically attracted to another, I never imagined myself in the role I took with Treize. There was something deeply satisfying about being like that with him, but it wasn't something I could explain, nor something I felt I needed to explain. How is it possible to analyze something as irrational as sexual desire? What's the point?

Lying there, I remembered the first night we were together - properly, not in some cramped train compartment. I'm not sure why I was thinking about it then, because it wasn't my most successful sexual experience. I remember the wanting, more overwhelming than I'd ever felt. Nervous anticipation, my hands shaking when he told me I could do whatever I wanted to him, that it was my choice - ah, to say that to a sixteen-year-old who'd never been with anybody before... to be the sixteen-year-old who heard it, that unconditional permission to enact over a year of tormented fantasies... to touch anywhere I wanted, to kiss anywhere I wanted, to be kissed, touched, held, stroked... and he showed me what to do even though I knew from secretly reading about it, and then I pushed into him because it was mildly less intimidating than having him do it to me… and my mind was utterly blown by the feeling of it, the intensity, his heat, his smoldering sexiness... and he kissed me, still unsatisfied, after I lost it in an embarrassingly short amount of time, reassuring me that that's how it always is in the beginning... and then I sucked him off as an apology, which was the first time I heard him moan, and it was, my god, the most amazing sound I'd ever heard because I was the one who'd made him do it… and I would hear it again when he took me, some time near the end when his eyes closed and he seemed to realize the same thing I did, that we were finally an equation of perfect balance… a perfection I would come to crave every day, over and over... What insanity...

My face grew warm with such thoughts and I bit my bottom lip when he turned and showed me an even better side of him. I slid my hand over my lap and felt myself, just a little, just to feel something, if not him. I was already starting to notice the alcohol as my empty stomach let it pass freely into my system. It made me feel high, looser, braver. I saw that the Mother of God was still hanging from his neck after all those years, except that in more recent days she shared his chest with a pair of dog tags. I would have thought it a sacrilegiously humorous juxtaposition if I'd been capable of thinking about anything but sex at that moment.

When he grabbed a pair of slacks from a hangar and slid them on, I felt immediate aggravation, and when he put on a dark green button-down shirt that brought out the red in his hair, I was certain that he wasn't going to give me anything that night except casual company.

"So… that's it?"

He stepped out of the closet, tucking in his shirt and zipping up his pants as he walked. "What do you mean, 'that's it'?" He stopped by the side of the bed and looked down at me, and his expression froze when he swiftly grasped the meaning of my comment.

"Jesus, Milliardo…"

Being the pervert I was, looking in all the places I shouldn't have been, I perceived his reaction quite clearly. I doubt there was much he could have done for it. After all, it was no accident that I was lying prostrate on the bed, flush-faced and so obviously, shamelessly wanting, my hair splayed out against the dark hue of his comforter... There was a strong part of me that wanted to punish him for the position he was in, which had given rise to the recent lack intimacy - physical and emotional - in our relationship. It was cruel, childish, and misdirected, but I so badly wanted him to share my displeasure.

It was cruel because I knew that his new title had him strung and paranoid, vulnerable to gossip and dangerous suppositions. He was worried about one of his staff walking in on us, which they seemed to do to him on a fairly regular basis, judging by our long distance vid-phone conversations. In those days he hadn't mastered his authority in the day-to-day workings of his life, as he'd grown accustomed over the years to having little to no privacy, the military default. He hadn't yet accepted the heady truth that he had a full staff whose sole purpose was to ensure his comfort and command readiness, meaning that he could rightly tell them to piss off whenever the fancy struck. I suppose he was still adjusting to being one of the most powerful men in the world.

It was a precarious and stressful time for him, for he had much to prove to the Alliance and Romefeller. For them, he had to be better than perfect. Better than the best. He had to be superhuman, and superhumans don't keep their male friends as lovers. They don't have lovers. They don't slip. They don't falter. And they certainly don't get pushed around by small women at funerals.

He sighed quietly and sat down on the opposite side of the bed, facing away from me. "De Luca's mother was right, you know."

I frowned, sat up on my elbows, and pushed aside my dirty thoughts and discomfort. It was surprisingly easy to do. "She was out of her mind with grief."

"She was upset, but she was not wrong." His gaze was far away, somewhere between the nightstand and the moon.

"Death is not beautiful," he continued, his voice barely audible. "It's miserable, and it rips your heart out."

I sat upright and folded my leg on the bed. I felt a sudden compulsion to reach out for him, but I didn't. It didn't feel right. Nothing about that day felt right. "If De Luca had been hit by a car, that woman would have been wailing on the side of the road, damning every vehicle that passed. She's an Italian mother. From the horror stories I've heard from Noin, what she did to you was nothing."

"I should have left him with Galanos."

"Don't." I shook my head, my bangs brushing back and forth across my face. "You can't think like that. He wanted to be in our unit. He was happy."

"That could have been you."

"Stop."

"Major Chernov took your place when your name came up on the CQ roster, isn't that right?"

"Treize, stop."

He turned his head even further away, facing the wall now, seeming either shocked or embarrassed by the words coming out of his own mouth even as they continued to flow unchecked. "I could not bear to see your name -"

"Stop it!"

He stopped. I don't know what I would have done if he hadn't. Nothing he was saying made any sense in the context of the friend I thought I knew, the one who would never stoop to doubt himself openly or plainly state his fear for my safety, his fondness of me, his love... I scrambled to bring the conversation back to something more familiar, light banter, a confrontation, maybe even an argument. We excelled at all equally.

"I'm not going to let some ham-fisted Alliance idiot get me killed, but if you don't do something about them soon, today won't be the last funeral like this."

"I know that." His voice sounded subdued, its usual self-assured clearness dampened, like we were talking through a layer of glass

"I need command authority. All of us do. And yes, it could have been me on that mission. But I also could have been leading them and I would have done it right."

"I know."

"So fix it."

"Giving me orders now?" It was a disinterested observation, a bland acknowledgement my tiresome insubordination.

"You shouldn't have to be ordered to do what you promised."

"It is not that simple."

It seemed simple enough to me. For years I thought Treize's single ambition was to overthrow the Alliance, if only for the sake of ridding the world of ill-trained, morally-misguided thugs who routinely preemptively invaded autonomous countries as a sort of sport. I watched him deftly scale the chain of command, every promotion bringing him closer to that key position where, with the right planning, OZ would emerge from the shadows topple the Federation handily. Our units were in place. We had the best suits, the best intelligence, the best soldiers, the tightest, most loyal network. I expected him to have done something already, and yet, everything I waged my vengeful hopes on had seemed to fall out of Treize's favor, overtaken in priority by his redoubled efforts to negotiate the towering echelons of the Romefeller hierarchy. I didn't see the connection. I didn't understand why his momentum had slowed to what appeared to be nothing. His impassioned talk of revolution had ceased, transmuted into pokerfaced politicking with dukes and viscounts.

"I'm sick of watching soldiers die because of them, Treize. Sick."

"And you think I am not?"

"That was the seventh funeral I've been to this year. What one was it for you?"

"I was not aware that it was a competition."

"Well, maybe we should start one, because you need to get your head out of your paperwork once and a while to see what your leisurely diplomatic fondlings are costing your soldiers."

He snorted. "Simply because you have never been diplomatic in your life doesn't mean that it is not necessary skill."

"I'm not denying its necessity! I'm saying that you've grown rather fond of it, wouldn't you say? Since when are you a career politician? That uniform you wore today belongs to a soldier. That's your job, your first and last responsibility. You're wasting time and energy screwing around, glad-handing with Romefeller instead of putting the Alliance where it belongs. And I know you have 'plans,' wonderful plans, sweeping, magnificent plans - "

He snapped his head around and glared at me, each word carefully measured and cut with biting condescension. "You don't even understand what you're talking about."

"The hell I don't! I understand enough. I understand that your soldiers - _your_ own soldiers in the organization _you_ built - are dying for nothing while you sit here in Bremen, wining and dining and scheming about whatever it is that's suddenly so very bloody important. And you know what? Congratulations! You're right, as usual. I don't know what you're planning, because you never tell me a goddamn thing anymore!"

I laughed dryly and continued. "But then, why should you? Who the hell am I? Just another one of thousands, I suppose, flung halfway across the continent in a sector that went nearly six months without a single whisper of action until three days ago – oh, but now you're making me the senior officer there! What a generous consolation! I guess I should be thanking you, just like Symanski's parents did. But you know I won't."

I was spinning, my mouth spouting jumbled, enraged confusion faster than my brain could organize and censor it, burning through a backlog of longing and frustration that had been accumulating for the better part of ten months. "And why should I? Because you're afraid of having me here? Afraid of what they'll say? Afraid I'll cramp your Romefeller social schedule? I won't. Throw your soul under Duke Dermail's boots, if you think it will make your dreams come true, I won't say another word about it. But since you refuse to tell me what's going on, at least let me be here with you while you drive yourself into the ground!"

He didn't say anything. Only stared. Injured. I'd crossed the line, though I'm not sure exactly where – I'd said so many offensive things that it was impossible to determine what part had hurt him the most. I felt hot, and everything but the space between us seemed unbearably close and small. That fucking awful chandelier hanging in the center of the room was like a blazing sun throwing harsh, glaring light on my insensitivity and deplorable lack of self-control.

I looked down at the tight fistful of comforter in my right hand. "What are you doing here, Treize?" I was talking to myself, wondering aloud, too ashamed to ask him directly. "I don't understand."

He turned away again and there was a painfully long span of nothing. And then, so quietly:

"I am doing the best I can. I cannot do any more than that."

Of the very few absolute truths in the universe, one is that Treize always did the best he could. He was that way since the moment I met him, and he would continue to be that way until he stumbled over the finish line with watery eyes, only then succumbing, collapsing under the weight of overwhelming agony and hope, remorse and triumph, fire and debris...

"I am promoting you because I am creating a position for you as my Second in Command here in Bremen, not so that you can take over for Major Chernov." His tone was curt, factual, unaffected, which I'm sure he realized was painful for me to hear. "Major Oswald is being transferred from Cairo to fill her position. You will proceed to Berlin for the Advanced Officer Training course starting on 28 January. Your signed orders are on my desk."

I crawled across the bed and knelt behind him, knees astride his hips, my chest flush against his back. I wrapped my arms around him and rested my chin on his shoulder. At that moment, I didn't care about propriety or restraint or Lieutenant Nassef or Lady Une or that woman in the pant suit. I dared all of them and the whole world to walk through the door and witness what we really were: a train wreck. Not even the great love between us was enough to change hard truth of it.

"I'm sorry," I whispered. "I'm sorry..." My senses picked up faint notes of the shaving cream he had used earlier that day. It was nothing more than a popular over-the-counter formula, but on his skin, the smell made me want to push him down on the bed and press so hard against him that it hurt.

He reached up and grasped loosely onto my forearms, and when he spoke, his words seemed as much an assurance to himself as to me. "And I have not forgotten my soldiers. Never for a moment. I want you to understand that. I want you to understand that... there's a reason for all of this. All of it. Everything I do, every single day."

"I know. I know, Treize."

"I want your trust."

"I know you do."

"Do I have it?"

"Yes."

"Because if you don't trust me, I cannot be certain of anything I do."

To this day, nobody has ever paid me a higher compliment, and there was never one I was so utterly undeserving of. I tilted my head and pressed my lips to the downturned corner of his mouth. Silence filled the room as I held him, my breathing falling into a slow, steady rhythm with his.

"I believe we missed our reservation," he noted offhandedly after a few minutes had passed.

"I'm not hungry anyway."

"I have to get out of this building." He tilted his head upwards towards the light fixture, wincing at the brightness. "Who puts a chandelier in a bedroom?"

I smiled against his cheek. "Let's just walk, then. Around the city. If your PA will give you permission."

"I have asked to be undisturbed this evening. Unless the base is burning down, Nassef is handling my calls and mail."

"Let me stay with you."

"No." He shook his head halfheartedly. "No."

"You just said you won't be disturbed. Throw me down in one of your guest rooms."

His left eyebrow arched. "You want me to throw you down in the guest room?"

"Among many other things…" I breathed in his ear, sliding my fingers down the muscular contours of his chest and abdomen. It had been so long since I'd touched him, and that small single gesture was enough to reignite every ounce of desire for him that I'd first walked into the room with. I rocked my hips forward to make sure he could feel it.

"Ah. Hm…" He ran his hands down my thighs and pressed back against me. "Only if you make that frittata in the morning. With the tomatoes."

"Do you have eggs?"

He considered the question for a moment. "No. I don't think I have tomatoes, either."

"Then surely you see the problem with this arrangement." I began unbuttoning his shirt, and he caught my hands in his.

"I am glad you're here."

I was unspeakably relieved when I heard those words and saw the sincerity of the smile that accompanied them. He disentangled himself and stood, pulling me up with him, pulling me to him, his arms encircling my waist. In his eyes roiled an intense and improbable combination of tenderness, yearning, and dejection, layers of emotion that struck a certain way in a certain light, flashing, flickering, surfacing and receding. Nothing was simple with Treize. Ever. It was a lesson I relearned over and over, and somehow I was always surprised by just how complex he remained no matter how familiar we became.

"Milliardo…"

"Hm?"

He hesitated before gathering me as close as he could. My arms tightened around him and I closed my eyes when his parted lips brushed mine, so lightly, just barely touching. I smelled the sweet mint from his toothpaste and, faintly behind that, alcohol.

"…Nothing."

He kissed me before I could question him, effectively driving away any objections that might have been stirring in my head. We stayed like that, kissing, embracing, until we forgot about the chandelier and our walk and the Alliance and Lieutenant De Luca's tiny mother.

xxx

I know there was a reason, Treize. You had to do something about the world. All of us... we all had to do something. I now realize that we took the simpler road, one traveled with comrades and bolstered by the might of expensive, intimidating weaponry and powerful politics. But there was a weakness and a cowardice inherent in adopting the life of a soldier - a fear of being alone, a fear of living without explicit guidance, a fear of not being remembered. Soldiers who try to go it alone are the ones who end up as dead men or deserters. Case in point, us. You wanted to be more than a soldier, and you paid for it. I wanted to be more, and everybody else paid for it.

I'm not sure that you could have been anything but what you became, as fatalistic as that sounds. Your father wrote your biography before you were even old enough to add and subtract, even if most of it was done unconsciously. Didn't you tell me that he taught you the proper way to salute when you were only five, smiling when you got it right, his top left incisor slightly crooked the way yours once was? How do you fight something like that? And after I arrived, it only got worse, didn't it? You were an obsessive boy, your face so serious in the light of that monitor in your room. What kind of child watches things like that? Horrible, violent things, the stuff of nightmares, the stuff of Sanc's downfall. You thought nobody saw you like that, but I did.

Sometimes I wish I'd never come to live with you.

In the end, we all did the best we could, didn't we? Didn't we try our hardest? Didn't we give until we were spent, only to wrench out one last shot, one last step, one last breath? And yet, somehow, we simply weren't strong enough. Was it the flaw inherent in the methodology? Did we ever stand a chance to really change the world?

I pulled down the swivel head of the stand magnifier and carefully manipulated a pair of rubber-coated tweezers around the intricate maze of the receiver's innards. It was meticulous work, attention-consuming, and wholly enjoyable. I had never embarked upon a project of quite that nature before, but Vadimas' plans were so painstakingly and precisely drawn out that the engineers in both of us conversed with ease.

I could no longer hear the ticks and thumps of various natural and manmade objects as the wind tossed them against the cellar door. Cellar door. I recalled reading that "cellar door" is one of the most phonetically pleasing compounds in the English language. I spoke the words aloud three times, rolling each syllable around in my mouth, listening to the sound of my voice as it was absorbed by the thickness of the concrete walls. Like my father's, my voice is deep and clear. Cutting. Even when innocently testing the theory of some prominent linguist of days past, it sounded like a command. How, I wondered, could anybody listen to me for any extended period of time without pulling their hair out? Treize told me that my voice was "exceedingly pleasant." Then again, he was something of an odd man with a clear bias in my favor.

There was a sudden knocking, then the familiar groaning resistance of the hinges as Vadimas threw open the door. He mumbled something in a language unfamiliar to me - something Baltic, perhaps - and then chuckled as he cautiously descended the narrow, creaking stairs.

"Ha! Looks like you've been busy," he said, greeting me with a firm pat on the shoulder.

The man was a toucher. My parents had been physically affectionate with me, but they had also made it a point that nobody else except family and close staff should touch me without explicit permission. Treize had been a toucher, too, perhaps in spite of his rigid upbringing. It would be romantic for me to say that I was immediately comfortable with my childhood friend's gestures, but that would be a lie. It took time for me to become accustomed to the brotherly touch of his hand or the occasional arm around the shoulder. Eventually I came to tolerate it, then accept it, then appreciate it, and, ultimately, crave it in a desperate, uncontrollable way.

"I'm nearly finished, but I need to order another capacitor. I..." I grasped for an appropriate French colloquialism and failed, settling for an English phrase that probably didn't translate as well as I would have liked. "I killed this one." I dropped the part into his waiting palm and smirked at the stunned expression on his face.

"Now, how the hell did you do that?" he asked, his bushy eyebrows rising and falling as he closely inspected the lightly scorched terminals.

"You seem shocked. Maybe impressed?"

He tossed the capacitor in the trash can on the other side of the room with a skillfulness unbefitting his age. "Something like that, young man!"

His gaze passed slowly between the 3-D CAD model and what I'd completed of the scanner. As I observed, I could see the scientist in him, a shadow of the younger man he was when he poured his talents onto the design I was realizing. Aside from the arthritis, he was a hardy old man, well-groomed, optimistic, and, unlike his carefree, ribald personality suggested, sharp as a tack.

"May I ask why you decided to work for OZ?" I asked, finally comfortable enough to venture the question.

"For the same reason we all went to work for OZ: to become better and to do good."

Become Better and Do Good. It could have been the organization's motto, something that's conveniently both self-serving and magnanimous. It was the golden duality that soothed our badgering consciences in times of doubt, and with creative application, it could justify practically anything.

"But it wasn't that simple, was it?" I thought about what Treize said in Bremen. Nothing was simple about what we were doing back then.

Vadimas rested his hip against the bench. One of his rough, world-weathered hands picked at a hangnail on the other. How long had it been since those hands had flexed without pain?

"Men like us, sometimes we can't see past here." He held his palm about ten centimeters from his nose. "We want to be the best and we want to do what interests us. The science and theory drive us, the thrill of creation moves our hearts, and sometimes," he paused and looked me straight in the eye, "the consequences allude us."

Tallgeese. Gundam 01. A host of first generation test suits. In my mind, there had been a fundamental disconnect between what I did on the proving grounds and the intended effects of these technologies. In every suit I only saw the benefits afforded to the pilot. Greater mobility. Faster reaction time. Increased thrust capacity. It was a game, a mental and physical challenge. A way to get approval from Treize. I doubt I thought more than a handful of times about what I was actually accomplishing: the progressive perfection of the killing machine.

"But we have to forgive ourselves. Or, at the very least, try to make up for what we've done. I live as well as I can. I farm clean, I sell my produce at a fair price, I don't eat animals. Nothing will ever make up for what I was a part of, but the day we stop trying is the day we have resigned ourselves to hell."

My first thought, predictably self-defeating, was that I'd failed beyond redemption. I'd already done what I'd thought was best and, ironically, my best was also my worst. Earth and space deserved better than my efforts, which, contrary to my intent, always brought great harm upon those I loved and cared about. It was comedic in a bleak, dissatisfying sort of way.

"I know what you're thinking. You're thinking, 'You're a crazy old man! How could I ever make up for it all?' Well, start small and work from there."

Start small. I supposed that I'd already done that. I'd managed to wake up that morning. I'd patched myself together in to a semblance of the person I once was, like it or lump it. I fought the malevolent demon named Grief on a daily basis, resisting her siren song that beckoned me towards a the treacherous, rocky shores of a fantasy world where my life was anything but what it actually was. That was something of a start, at least.

"You're a kind person, and I know that you didn't do what you did for yourself."

Oh, yes. How kind of me to lead the White Fang and demand the annihilation of the planet. How generous of me to lapse into a drug-induced stupor for three months and negligently avoid paying my rent. How noble of me to invade my landlord's house and raid his medicine cabinet for prescription painkillers.

"That's not true. I did it only for myself." Which wasn't quite true, either. I lowered my head and busied myself with stripping the end of a wire, my bangs to shielding me from the misplaced sympathy he was offering. "And how could you possibly think that? I've done nothing but use you since I arrived."

"Phooey! So you're selfish. Don't like it? Change it. Finish that damn scanner and listen to the world around you. There's a place for you. There's a place for all of us, but you have to want one."

That was the clincher. I had to want it, and wanting it meant that I had to convince myself that I deserved it. For an intrinsically self-loathing individual, this was a herculean task.

"And I hate to tell you, kiddo, but you're no farmer."

I looked up at him and couldn't help but smile at the frankness of his critique. "Have I been doing that badly?"

"With all the daydreaming you do out there, you'd probably go broke and starve to death."

"Oh."

The old man laughed at me, and it felt good.


	8. The Entity is Bold and Brash

Title: Limbo

Chapter: 8/12: The Entity is Bold and Brash

Pairing: Past Treize/Zechs (made present-tense via flashbacks)

Spoliers: Series, EW

Warnings: Death themes, male/male sexual situations, foul language, grief, angst, cynicism, debatable instances of sap. Flashbacks throughout. Rated M for swears and darkness

Disclaimer: I don't own any part of GW. No monies have been or will be made off of this thing.

Please see Limbo 1 for very important notes.

I'm trying something different this chapter, using episodic flashbacks instead of one long one, so here's the legend, though I'm sure you can figure it out based on context:

xxxx: separates main story from flashbacks

xoxo: separates flashback segments

I decided not to be so horribly angsty this chapter, because it was starting to depress me. Also, I have only recently become aware of the very excellent timeline available at the About Gundam Wing site, and I realize this story has already screwed the pooch based on it, so sorry to all the canon wonks out there.

Thank you so much to all who've commented, especially LoveyouHateyou, who continues to delight me by publishing more Lightening Arc side stories. To everybody who's not LH, go read them! They're just wonderful. He's in my favorite authors section.

Hope you enjoy.

"Fuck!"

I huffed, blowing my bangs out of my eyes only to have them fall right back into place. In the chill of mid-November, I was hot with frustration. My coat and zip-up cardigan had hours prior been sent sailing across the room in two separate fits of irritation. Even my t-shirt felt stifling as another inconclusive error message smeared its ugly face across the screen.

I was close. Agonizingly close. Each subsequent failed test was like a hangnail being slowly yanked, and I was to the point where I wanted to launch the damn thing across the room to keep company with my clothes.

Of course, I have substantially more self-control than that. I also know when it's time to take a break.

I slid off the stool and stretched the aching muscles in my back and shoulders. I had an unfortunate tendency towards hunching over the workbench like an infatuated mad scientist, an unflattering but not entirely hyperbolic comparison. In my overzealous efforts to complete the project, I had begun keeping irregular hours, working through the entire night until a late morning crash sent me back to my rental for a few hours of imperturbably deep sleep.

It felt good to step out into the cold autumn night. The sky was crystalline, and the air was so crisp that it burned my nose and lungs, clearing my sinuses and senses, and could be exhaled like smoke as a visible puff of condensation. I craned my head back and allowed myself to feel infinitesimally small in the universal context.

"It might be something simple, something I've overlooked," I said to myself, thinking back on the procedures I'd followed to get the receiver online. I doubted that it was the construction. I'd been my typical meticulous and neurotic self the entire time; what was on that blueprint was what was on that table mocking my outrage.

"Maybe the design…?"

I couldn't disregard the possibility, though the specs and calculations seemed correct to me. I tentatively concluded that the fatal error lay in the one component that I hadn't touched, the progressive scanning and decryption program, which was the part of the unit that Vadimas had completed as an OZ researcher. My skills in computer science were inferior to my engineering talents, so my attempt to debug the program would have been one more futile exercise in self-defeat. I was beginning to grow tired of such abuse.

I crossed my arms over my chest – by that point, I actually had something of a chest again. In France, I leveled out on the lean side, which appeared to be my body's preference when not tasked with routinely manipulating tons of metal in shoot-first-or-die combat. Towards the end of my OZ career, I'd gotten big, especially after I began wrestling with the Tallgeese. By the time I took command of the White Fang, I was over 80 kilos of pure muscle, which was something of a wonder because I don't remember eating very much in those days.

Brilliant streams of light streaked across the night sky, more wreckage burning up in the atmosphere. I wondered grimly whether any of those parts were from the Tallgeese II. I saw the footage of the explosion taken from one colony's external cameras. Shit like that was and still is all over the nets. Sometimes it feels like exploitation, other times it feels like justice.

I'd watched that footage over and over, to the extent of being morbidly obsessed with it. At first there was disbelief. I couldn't accept that Treize was in that suit, that he'd actually been blown up, ripped to pieces, horrible… fucking impossibly horrible… And then it hit me just how horrible it really was, and it made me sick just to think about it, literally sick, like I was going to vomit, and my guts wrenched because of the wrongness, that something so terrible could happen to the human body, to the body of my friend, the body I'd held, lusted for, admired, loved, and there was searing, cringing, jaw-clenching fear that he might have died in agonizing pain, and I wanted desperately to believe that the explosion had killed him before the vacuum of space ruptured his lungs and boiled his blood…

So I broke it down, looked up archived training material on death by exposure, broken down by forensic scientists, given in small packets to commanders to silently contemplate after losing men, and so I broke down Treize's death to its most clinical elements, hard figures strung together with probable assumptions, and I concluded with a mind unadorned with flimsy suppositions and hopes that he probably didn't feel much of anything if the core had exploded, as he would have likely been crushed inside the cockpit or, barring that, would have experienced acute hypoxia when the cabin depressurized, sparing him from feeling too much discomfort, a swift death either way… And in my conclusion, there was some consolation. Some. A small burden un-shouldered.

And funny – all the times I watched that footage and I never saw that Gundam pilot killing Treize. I only saw Treize killing himself, falling on his sword, the error so deliberate, so obvious to my tactically trained eye. Treize had never moved that slowly, never left himself so open, never threw himself at an enemy with his arms in an amateur's caricature of an attack position. I didn't blame Wufei Chang. Didn't ever want to lay eyes on him, thought I might want to punch him in the throat if I ever did, but I didn't blame him. I felt bad for him, actually, being used like that.

It was in November that I could finally begin to acknowledge what had happened without losing it completely, without going glassy-eyed, without seizing up. By that night beneath the stars, the fact of Treize's death had become like a veil over my eyes, thin enough that I could see past it, but always there, tinting everything.

When I felt the goose bumps raising the hairs on my arms, I went back down to the cellar to try the start-up process one more time. If I couldn't do it then, I resolved to go to Vadimas for help.

Step one, step two. No problems. The wiring was tight, the power ample. It had to be the software. I chastised myself for not taking more computer science classes at Lake Victoria. I was good enough at math and basic programming, but intricate algorithms like the ones written by Vadimas were the product of intense study. I would have had to have chosen the major, which had seemed too static and boring. With the absence of majors like speedology and fastonomics, I chose engineering, where at least I could learn to make things that made my body sing. How stereotypically male of me. It seemed that my interests hadn't changed much at all since I was five.

Step one, step two, and then, without prelude or explanation, the program booted up. I rolled my eyes and shook my head when it happened, because there are few things more obnoxious than temperamental electronics; you never know when they're going to work. But I ran with it. The tuner began randomly scanning through the 1600 to 1700 megahertz frequency band, the standard interval for colonial and other Earth-orbit transmissions. If I picked up anything in that band, I would be able to confirm that the antenna was working within specs.

And although it was my sole intent, what I'd been singularly striving towards for nearly two months, I was amazed and not a little thrilled when it picked up a signal at 1643.4983.

/ "…-ldn't understand why she was asking me that. Doesn't she hear herself when she's talking? I mean, it's like she's missing some sort of 'normal' chip or something. She just…I don't know. Know what I mean? I mean, God, there's nothing more embarrassing than taking her out in public and – "/

I made a face and pressed the 6 key to move to a different channel. It stopped at 1620.9002.

/ "…anything you need me to pick up at the store?" "That cake that I like. You know which one – " "With the almonds on top?" "Yes! The best. I can't believe you don't like it. Oh, well. More for me – "/

The next station I scanned to was a heated argument between a man and a woman in a language that I didn't understand. I think it was Hindi. Something something something hu. Something something something hain. What was that? I never did bother to learn it. Not like Treize. He was possessed by it. He soaked it up like a sponge…

/ Mai nahii samaja hu. I don't understand./

Treize repeated the phrase aloud, imitating the inflection and pace with the proficiency of the native speaker in the instructional. It was one more reminder that he was the most stubborn man in the universe.

"I don't hear your accent."

"I am not using it."

He didn't want to be rude. Almost everybody could converse in Standard, but Treize was a principled and sensitive traveler. There were few things he found more insulting than somebody who didn't even attempt the local language, which was why when such people approached him in Moscow or wherever he happened to be in Russia, he'd rudely fake ignorance if they didn't begin their queries with at least an "Izvinite pozhaluista…"

"Then how will they know you're Russian?"

"I suppose they won't know," he replied, his eyes meeting mine as he glanced up from a notebook computer with dimensions a mere inch too small to use comfortably. "Does it matter?"

"It seems to."

"Would you prefer that I did not have an accent?" he asked in perfect textbook Standard.

Hearing those words in that way from Treize's lips confused my senses. They were flat. Boring. Devoid of the intensity that seemed innate in everything he said. My distaste must have been obvious.

"That's what I thought."

/Aap kaise hain? How are you?/

"I don't get it."

"I believe that 'aap' means 'you' and 'hain' seems to be an interrogative or a state of existence, probably both. 'Kaise,' I suppose, is the 'how' part."

"No, I mean, I don't get this." I pointed my finger in a small arc indicating our surroundings: the inside of a international-class business jet. He didn't want anybody tracking the tail number of his personal aircraft, so he chartered one. "This." I pointed to us, sitting across from each other in our civilian clothes and to our unopened luggage sitting neatly in the lounge in the far-aft segment of the aircraft. "All of this."

"I believe the term you're grasping for is 'vacation.' I realize it has been so long that you may have forgotten how to take one."

"Says you."

"I am enjoying myself."

"I don't know how you can take a vacation now." It was late March of 195. All around us were whispers of something big, something tremendous and life-altering on the horizon. Whispers and whispers from all around us. Too close. Immeasurably far. We didn't know exactly what it was and we didn't know when to expect it, but it was palpable. It was metal. It was dangerous and apocalyptic. It was the first domino, teetering, threatening. We had our guns pointed in the dark, wary of every creaking floorboard, every cold draft, holding our breaths as we waited for the flick of a switch.

"I cannot think of a better time for vacation."

"We need to be ready."

Without a beat: "We are ready."

"Do you honestly think that?"

"We are as ready as we can be to fight an enemy that, until this point, has only existed in rumor. There is nothing to do but wait, and I will not wait a minute longer on the Continent."

Treize had tired of Bremen rather quickly, tired of the close proximity to Romefeller, to the decorum, the parties, the pandering, flirtatious small-talk. He'd already secured his position in the Foundation as well as a long-sought promise from Dermail that he would be awarded nothing less than full command of the military after the coup. Operation Daybreak was ready, poised in the rafters, waiting, hinging on something from the stars, another operation, an explosion of chaos, a Pandora's box that Treize crouched next to, all poise and patience, a full deck in hand. Waiting. He had become the archetypical embodiment of confident control, and at that point he was everything he would need to be in the year ahead. He was vastly different even from a mere two months prior, ever changing with mercurial fluidity, adapting to his position, enhancing it, testing its limits and finding very few.

He ran off without anybody – not even Lady Une – knowing precisely where he was going, skirting around omnipresent and ever-prodding security details using nothing but smooth calculation and persistence. Slowly, article by article, he'd packed a bag sitting in a lone jeep at the back of the motor pool on the basement level of the HQ building, a unit believed to be out of order until one day it and the commander of the OZ disappeared, though not before swinging by his Second's quarter to snatch up the waiting man before speeding off like a pair of bandits after a heist. The shit probably twirled around on the fan blades for a good three hours before Une convinced all concerned parties that His Excellency's absence was planned. Treize had become an Entity, and The Entity was bold and brash.

"And you didn't want to wait at home?" We always went home. It was what we did. Home was safe for us. Private. Secluded. That we were vacationing somewhere that wasn't Russia was both nerve-wracking and fantastically exciting.

"You chose our destination. If you had chosen to go home, we would already be there."

"I wouldn't exactly call a closed-eyed, finger-to-spinning-globe accident an informed choice."

"After I finally got you to comply."

"All you said was 'Close your eyes and stick out your finger.'"

"Were you afraid I might bite you?"

"Not exactly..."

"You have never been afraid of my mouth before." I felt his foot rubbing against my calf.

"Treize..."

He smiled. "It was a good choice."

xoxoxoxoxoxoxo

I blinked once. Twice. My mind stalled and would not interpret for me what I was seeing. The image was there, clear and unmistakable, the problem glaringly obvious, but as I scraped for a solution, my brain drew a long, white blank.

I backed out of the room slowly and turned my head to look at Treize, who had thrown his bag on one of the two beds and was unpacking. My frozen stupefaction caught his attention as he moved to the closet to hang up his clothes, his arms full of casual pants and shirts.

"Problem?"

My laughter was incredulous and not the least bit amused. "There's, um, no shower."

"Oh?"

"No bath."

"Really."

"There's a drain, and there's a bench."

"Hm."

"You're not surprised. Why aren't you surprised? This doesn't bother you?" I could feel my grouchy jetlag percolating into anxiety. "Please tell me you didn't intend this."

"The resorts are full of tourists."

"We're tourists!"

"Yoga tourists. "

"I don't care what kind of tourists they are! They have showers there, don't they?"

"I had no idea you were so fussy."

"Wherever did you get that idea? Just look at me!"

He did and grinned so widely that both of his loathed dimples appeared. "You should feel thankful that I reserved a room with a Western-style toilet and a sink with running water."

I took a deep breath and watched as he hung up his clothes, and in that moment the reality of what we were doing hit me like a sinking stone in my stomach. We were on vacation. Alone. Together. No work. No briefings. No drills. No surveillance. No aides. No goons. And we were in India, a peacefully compliant Federation country with remarkably little military and rebel activity. It was a small piece of normal, a sample, a petit-four. He was right. I should have been thankful. I was thankful, even if it would take me a while to realize it.

I was also amped up to the point where I had doubts about whether I could decompress at all in two weeks. Being Treize's Second was far from easy. I had over three dozen regional commanders who reported to me, one of the two hard lines to the colonel. I fielded their problems and questions and inspected their ranks and secured their funds and led them in combat and directed their training, all in addition to attending my own tangential interests in R&D. Most of the work that Treize once did was split between me and Lady Une, which was his very valid excuse for keeping us so close and properly ranked. It allowed him to focus on strategy and politics, his two fortes, both irrefutably necessary to build the future he envisioned.

On a personal level, my new post wasn't nearly as stressful as the combination of my last five duty stations before my promotion. I went out on assignment after assignment, but I would always come back to my home base, to Treize. I had every excuse to talk to him whenever I wanted to, so long as Une wasn't butting her little ass in my way, which she did often enough to make me suspect that she did it on purpose. It was as close to perfect as our professional lives would get. And our personal lives, while far from perfect, at least existed.

As poorly timed as it seemed to me then, the vacation was Treize's way of reminding me that he was still reaching out for me, no matter what he appeared to have become, no matter how close we were to the brink of the abyss. Reaching out to drag me down with him, maybe? He knew there was nowhere I'd rather be than at his side. I'd said so often enough. Thoughts of defecting, of insubordination, obsession, and betrayal, were so alien to my reality that they seemed impossible and revolting. But it would only be three weeks until I fought Heero Yuy for the first time and just four months until I was court-martialed.

"You're something else," I groused.

"And what might that be?"

"I'm not sure." Something wonderful. Something I'd never have again. Something I loved with everything I had and ever was.

"Room service will bring a bucket of hot water. And a ladle"

"A bucket...and a ladle."

He draped last of his four pairs of slacks over a hanger, careful to fold them along the pre-pressed creases. "You are intelligent enough to figure out what to do with it, no doubt."

"It'll take one bucket alone just to rinse my hair."

"I will share my bucket with you."

"Do you say that to all the boys you abscond with?"

There was a dark shadow in Treize's smile, and as he approached me from across the room, I enjoyed a moment of wide-eyed, elated anticipation before he took me by the shoulders, slammed me back against the wall, and leaned his weight into me.

"You're no boy," he growled in my ear. His hand slid between us and cupped me none too gently, making me gasp. "Boys don't feel like this."

"You would know..." I tried to move against him, but he had me pinned so hard that there wasn't any room for it.

"You begged me for it."

"And you gave in. Weren't you supposed to be the adult in that situation?"

"You forced my hand." He squeezed me. I was already hard. "Literally. Or have you forgotten?"

I reached my free arm around and grabbed his rear. "You were going to blue-ball me."

"I was trying to be decent."

"You weren't decent. You were wicked." I tried to kiss him, but he wouldn't let me.

"No, this is wicked." He let go of me, one side of his mouth upturned, taunting, and walked back to his luggage to finish putting his clothes away. I sighed heavily and sagged against the wall, too tired and not surprised enough to even comment. Not a minute later, room service knocked on the door and delivered a seafoam-green bucket of hot water...and a ladle. Treize had ordered it for me, and I somehow managed to thank him without sounding like a bastard.

I spent a good thirty minutes in the bathroom, freezing between awkward ladle scoops, grateful from the onset that I didn't need to wash my hair. I couldn't have handled it. The event ended with my cursing and unceremoniously tipping the bucket over myself, and when I stepped from the bathroom with a towel around my hips, I expected to be met with no small amount of teasing. Instead, I found Treize sacked out on one of the beds, fully clothed except for his shoes, arms crossed over his chest, legs crossed at the ankle. I said his name. Nothing. Not even the flutter of an eyelash. I couldn't bear to wake him, even though it was only 17:40. He'd accumulated so much sleep debt over the year that I thought it unlikely that he would ever pay it down, but I always wanted him to try.

I slipped on a pair of drawstring cotton pants I pulled from my bag, not wanting to be at a disadvantage, and carefully settled down next to him, covering both of us with a spare blanket I'd found in the closet. He made a small, strained sound, his face contorting into a look of pain, before turning over onto his side. I seized the too-rare opportunity to slide in close, and I wrapped my arm loosely around his waist. We had so few opportunities to sleep together, just sleep together without worrying about who might be found out of quarters or who might be needed in a pinch.

Touching my nose to the back of his neck, I picked up the scent of something juniper or rosemary, his shampoo, I believe, something that suited him just as well as everything else I loved and loathed about him. Outside, a car horn honked angrily and I heard yelling in Hindi. The scene was at once comfortable and confusing, familiar and foreign. I thought I wouldn't be able to sleep with all the commotion, but something stronger than the ambient noise level drew me in, pulled me down, made my eyelids heavy. I think it was Treize. He was warm. He was breathing slowly. He was in my arms. In that moment, he seemed utterly uncomplicated and so did the rest of the world.

As I fell asleep, I remembered something that I forgot to clear up with Major Nguyen before I left, AOTC rescheduling, something about moving to June, something so inconsequential that I can't even remember it...

xoxoxoxoxoxoxox

I slept like the dead that first night, awakening over twelve hours later sprawled out across the bed and drooling on Treize's pillow, which, fortunately for him, he was no longer using. He'd risen some time before and gone out onto the balcony overlooking the light traffic of the shop-lined street outside of our hotel. The place wasn't posh by any stretch of the imagination, not like the luxury resorts crammed with hundreds of well-to-do yoga enthusiasts attending a large conference outside the city. But our hotel was quaint, clean, local, with a lush, well-groomed courtyard. It was also sinfully cheap to stay there, the rate for our spacious room totaling in at about twenty-five credits a night. Of course, it was lacking certain amenities, but it didn't take long for me to find the appeal in the simplicity of it.

I padded groggily out to the balcony, too disoriented to be concerned with my shirtlessness, masklessness, carelessness, and found Treize sitting in something that was only a mesh cup holder classier than a lawn chair. I shielded my eyes from the rising sun and grumbled a "Good morning" in response to an exponentially more pleasant greeting offered from behind a copy of my favorite book, Anton Bajek's 'The Tapestry.' As soon as I was cognizant, we ordered breakfast from room service. My selection of fried finger chips had earned an appalled look from Treize, who ordered yellow dal after being told that the sale of meat, eggs, and alcohol had been banned in the holy city of Rishikesh for the last two-and-a-half centuries. I laughed at him. He called my breakfast unadventurous, which made me laugh harder for some reason.

Later, I was leaning over the plugged sink as it filled for my morning shave, plucking a few stray hairs from my brow, when I heard the sound of a phone. It was the standard ring tone, the one the company expects you to swap for the latest top ten pop song. From the ring, that boring, unadventurous ring, I knew it was my phone, a military issue, palm-size supercomputer from which I could redirect satellite orbital pattern and launch missiles from remote silos in the far reaches of Siberia and the Australian outback.

I'm not being serious, but I did have up-to-the-microsecond GPS, vid, and full network access capabilities. It was top of the line, no less technologically superior than one would expect for the Specials SoC. Half-expecting an important call, I turned off the water and moved with a purpose towards my luggage, where I'd stashed the thing before we left Europe. When I came out of the bathroom, Treize was standing beside my suitcase, holding my phone out and away from him as though it were covered in sewage.

"Who is it?" I asked, knowing he'd looked at the caller ID.

"Nguyen."

"Here." I took a few steps toward him, hand outstretched, fingers wagging insistently.

Instead of doing the polite thing, he slinked past me and walked to the bathroom. I heard a 'plunk' and the ringing ceased.

"What the hell?!" I yelled when I followed him and saw my phone sitting at the bottom of the sink. I glared at him when he didn't answer right away. "No, really! What the hell?"

I think I saw the briefest flash of regret in his eyes, but it was swiftly overrun by the cold, impenetrable set of self-righteousness. "We had an agreement. No work."

"It could have been important."

"Nguyen knows you're on leave. He can take up whatever it is with Une."

"That's no reason to trash my phone!"

"Surely there was nothing on it that could not be retrieved from the database."

"What do you know? Maybe I had personal numbers on there."

It seemed as though the thought had never crossed his mind. "Did you?"

"Maybe I have more of a life than you and the military!"

"Do you?" There it was. Jealousy. A twitch of the brow, a hardening of the eye. A firm, flat frown. I knew that look. I'd invented it.

"It's none of your business."

"No," he acquiesced dryly, "I suppose it isn't."

"You're just…" I fished my phone out of the basin, scowling as it dripped. "You don't have to be so dramatic."

He was silent while he watched me remove the battery to let the water from the innards drain. I used my t-shirt to wipe inside the nooks, doubtful that anything could be salvaged but unsure of what else to do. Between us was nothing but potential energy, like those demonstrations where the man at the top of a ladder is holding a text book, ready to drop it, but standing fast. A calculation pops up: GPE = mgh = (8.0 N)(10 m/s^2)(2m) = 160J. Except, in the case of us, it wasn't a book about to drop but rather a word, a sentence, an apology, a criticism, all things of indeterminable mass, all values too abstract to be quantified and calculated.

"Once everything starts, there will be no stopping it," Treize said, his tone doubtless, his gaze fixed, his stance tall, strong, sure.

"There will be no time for vacation."

(Read: This is the last one we'll ever have together.)

"There will be no time for rest."

(Read: We'll rest when we're dead.)

"There will be no time for us. Not like this, anyway."

(Read: Time will never be on our side.)

(If only I'd understood it then.)

He put one of his hands over mine and lightly took my chin with the other, turning my attention back to him. "I don't want there to be distractions." He took my ruined phone and set it on the counter. "I only want there to be you."

"Sweet sentiment," I replied quietly, sarcastic without intent, even as I let him divert attention from his erratic behavior, even as his words touched me. "But I don't suppose you left your phone."

"I only brought my personal. Une knows the number, but I asked her only to call in the event of emergency." 'Emergency,' I assumed, was understated code-speak for Operation Meteor or whatever concoction of anarchy the colonies were planning to drop on us.

Treize had an excuse to have a second phone, one full of numbers for his sprawling family and countless civilian acquaintances. He sometimes took the numbers of people he spoke to only once, "just in case" they would be of significance later, "just in case" he could use them in some capacity, call in a favor, offer a favor with the unspoken agreement of future returns. Ever the diplomat, ever the businessman, ever the networker. A handful of numbers were for people he simply found interesting, people he would invite to parties to shake up the guest list and the guests. As for real friends, however, Une and I were pretty much it.

"I will have Johann retrieve your data."

"What's the point?" As I turned away from him, out of his grasp, I heard my unshaven face scrape against his fingers. I grabbed my kit and went back to what I'd been doing before the phone fiasco started. "There's nothing on it that I can't get from Mil-DB."

"That was not fair of me to say."

"It was the truth. Nothing fair or unfair about it."

He moved behind me so that he could talk to me in the mirror. "What would you like to do today?"

I shrugged as I slathered on my shaving cream with short, practiced motions. "Not fight with you, for one."

"I think that will take an effort from both of us."

"I'll be good, so long as you don't pitch another fit and destroy something else of mine."

"All right. And I could do without the shit attitude."

I eyed his reflection sharply, critically, and then, for the first time in what might have been weeks, I smiled a real smile. "Deal."

xoxoxoxoxoxoxox

"Can you read what it says?"

"Not yet."

My camera was a single-lens reflex, not digital like the one I'd had prior, the one I'd grown out of, the one I'd felt lazy using. With an SLR camera, every photograph must be taken with deliberate precision; multiple elements must be considered. Every perfect picture was because I'd made it that way. Every botched picture was because I'd miscalculated or been too hasty. Any idiot can point and shoot, though I've never begrudged such an idiot his sleek, slim, digital camera. Not everybody likes the set-up, the inconvenience, the bulk, but it was one of the few artsy things I did and one of the few pleasures I had that reminded me of my mother.

My first camera, a point-and-shoot, had been a Christmas present from Treize's father, a man named Pyotr who went by Petya among family and friends and Peter in Federation and Foundation circles. I'd even heard him called Pete once, at one of the many Khushrenada events, which he had received with a tight-lipped smile that barely concealed the indigestion the nickname seemed to cause him. He was never any of those names to me, always "Your Father" to Treize and Count or Colonel Khushrenada to third parties. I never called him anything to his face, which resembled Treize's so closely that one would swear the two men had been stamped from the same cutter and only colored in differently. I never saw him enough to become close; he was eternally on duty, always working in his capacity as the deputy commander of the Federation Military Intelligence Branch headquartered in Prague. But even still, our unfamiliarity did not preclude thoughtful gifts that carried implied comments, the point of the camera being "Get your nose out of those books and go outside, for Chrissakes. Fondly, Pyotr."

I snapped in my zoom lens, my impromptu spyglass, pointed it in the direction of the sneaky bastard who was following us, and turned the focus dial until I could see who he was working for.

"Delta Sierra November." I lowered my camera and turned back to Treize, who wore the same face his father had when he'd been called Pete.

He pulled his phone from his front pocket and pressed the keys with sharp, irritated stabs. When he put it to his ear and held it in place with his shoulder, a purplish hickey peeked up over the collar of his button-down shirt of white linen.

I put the viewfinder up to my eye once more, going tete-a-tete with the paparazzo from across the Ganges river. He was in his mid-thirties, white, ignorant enough of custom to wear shorts. We'd noticed him earlier that day after stopping for aloo tikki at one of the stands outside the Andhra Ashram, thinking little of it until we'd caught him sloppily trailing us across the Lakshman Jhula footbridge. When I'd whipped around to give him a pissy look, he'd turned on his heels and went back the way he came.

Which had led to the stand-off at hand.

"You need to get a leash on your South Asia bureau, Mr. Carpenter," I heard Treize say as he walked back and forth along the length of the makeshift storefront of a nervous-looking man selling flip-flop sandals.

"Yes, now."

I, a man eternally concerned, was unconcerned. Treize had a leash on Mr. Carpenter's balls, from the sound of it, something that didn't surprise me. The first time I'd seen a picture of us in a magazine, some supermarket tabloid short on celebrity stories that week, I'd flipped out, retreated, paranoid, from all public engagements with him, something that he'd found obnoxious and unacceptable. That was when the payouts began. He was on a first-name basis with dozens of editors, most of whom could easily be persuaded to pursue other stories with some monetary inspiration. He wasn't about to have the parameters of his relationships dictated by gossip rags, even if it meant throwing his personal money at flotsam-pseudo-reporters who had children to send to Harvard and World Cup box seats to promise their buddies.

He was off the phone after a terse comment about keeping deals, and through my camera I saw our friend take a call on his cell, make an exasperated face, mouth a few choice words of displeasure – fuck, goddamn, maybe shit but perhaps shot – and flag down a bicycle rickshaw with a defeated flop of the wrist. I snorted, pleased, and lowered my camera to rest by the strap against my chest.

"What did you tell him?"

"I reminded him that I am still in close contact with Chancellor Klein and can at any time decide to inform her that her exchange intern has been cited for academic misconduct on no fewer than three occasions in the last two years."

"Ah."

Treize reached into his back pocket, withdrew a ten-credit-note from his wallet, and gave it to the shoe salesman in exchange for a decent pair of brown sandals that only cost two. He waved the man off when he half-heartedly protested the extra and apologized to him in Hindi. We stepped into the doorway of a restaurant fragrant with basmati and garam masala, where Treize removed his shoes and socks and replaced them with his new guilt-purchase.

"Well?"

I'd never seen him in anything of the sort before, but with his relaxed fashion and well-rested eyes, he pulled them off. They were practical, and many of the natives wore them, which met well with his "When in Rome" philosophy.

He smiled and bounced on the balls of his feet. "Now we match."

"Very cute."

In a way, it really was.

xoxoxoxoxoxoxox

"Remind me why I am the one who has to stand in front of it."

"You bet on the Superstars."

"We never shook on it."

"Hold still."

"I don't even understand the rules of cricket."

"You knew you had a fifty percent chance of losing. You bet anyway."

"I would never have made you do this if you'd lost."

"Bullshit you wouldn't have."

"Does it have to be right now?"

"Oh, right now is perfect, I'd say. Rain so early in the year... What good fortune."

"Are you implying that I'm a huge dick?"

"You're blushing."

"I am not. It would not be so bad if it wasn't wet."

"No, it wouldn't. Stop moving."

"I'm not."

"You're shifting. I can't focus."

"I think you cannot focus because I'm standing in front of a four-meter-tall glistening phallus."

"It's a sign of fertility."

"I don't think the Indians have a problem with fertility."

"Maybe because there's one of these on every other block."

"Just get it over with."

"Stop trying to sabotage the shot and I will."

"You are impossible."

For an instant, I had the perfect shot. My quick reflexes captured it.

"Definitely one for posterity."

"Yes, yes, I will save it for my first born. Let's get some food."

"All that cock making you hungry?"

"Actually, I was thinking of chana masala at that restaurant down the hill with the deck overlooking the river."

"You're no fun sometimes."

"That's not what you told me last night."

"...Oh. Right."

oxoxoxoxoxoxoxox

I jiggled the bag of day-old bread I had in my hand and looked up and down the alley. Nothing. I shook it harder until the plasticky rustling noise echoed off the walls of the buildings on either side of us.

Treize was leaning against the cement wall behind me, smoking a Gold Flake ("For the Gracious People"). The day after we'd arrived, he'd discovered that the convenience store whose alley we were standing in sold looseys, a fact obtained after he impressed Vikram the owner with his Hindi accent, courtesy, and the slang word "sutta." He and the man had become fast acquaintances, finding mutual interest in the budding military ambitions of Vikram's oldest son, Akrit. Vikram didn't know who Treize was, only that he "knew" people and was a veritable encyclopedia of information on the subject. Treize had told him that the Specials were the only way to go, but that Akrit should hold off on enlisting until he took an extra year of science and math in preparation. Based on Treize's plans, there wouldn't even be a Specials Corps in a year. I knew that as well as he did.

For all the filthy, choking stench of it, Treize looked like a picture-perfect, cool, attractive, corporately-planted advertisement for the smooth, refreshing flavor of premium Andhra Pradesh tobacco. I choose "picture-perfect," though this in no way reflects the level of neatness with which he was carrying himself. His pants were wrinkled. And his shirt. His hair was on the messy side. His cuffs were rolled to mid-forearm. All of these elements converged under the banner of careless chic, unintentional, unconcerned. It had only been a little over a week-and-a-half, and he already looked like a seasoned ex-pat or one of those public broadcasting journalists on the Culture and Society beat.

He routinely bitched out soldiers for smoking, rightly stating that it made them look unprofessional, but he always had one during every vacation. Just one. Always. He'd buy a pack and throw away nineteen every time. The brass lighter he had to use generally saw more action burning threads off of assault uniforms and singing frayed nylon on combat gear than lighting up cigarettes. Even he admitted that the routine was repulsive, but it was something he relished even though it was the brand of defiance typically subscribed to only by adolescent boys who wanted to piss off their fathers.

I whistled softly and shook the bag.

"She might not come today."

"She'll be here."

"You may attract other attention."

"They're hungry, too."

"You looked like the Pied Piper yesterday." He half-closed his eyes as he took one last, long drag and then scraped the cherry along the ground to put it out. The butt went into the garbage can conveniently situated to his left.

I whistled louder.

"How many were trailing you?"

"At least seven."

"And one cow."

There were animals everywhere in Rishikesh. Emaciated cows walked down the streets, their hips and ribs jutting sharply under their tightly-stretched skins. Some pulled carts, some carried merchandise, many simply wandered looking for rubbish and handouts.

I shook the bag again.

For every cow there were a dozen dogs that looked equally as wretched. They were friendly because sometimes tourists were friendly back and would keep them alive long enough to proliferate to numbers even more depressing with every year. Some got hit by cars or motor rickshaws, some died from disease, many died from starvation.

I heard a yelp and a quick skitter of claws on pavement.

"I told you."

I smiled and pulled out a piece of bread as I crouched to greet the small, brown puppy that had stopped at my feet, her rump and tail wagging furiously, her front paws prancing in place. She devoured the slice with remarkable speed, her puppy lips smacking as she chomped, ravenous.

"She has fleas, no doubt."

"Probably."

"Fleas jump high."

"I'm not terribly worried about it, Treize."

She licked my hand when I tried to pet her head, all smacking, wet mouth and tongue. I wanted to name her. I had a dog once in Sanc, a German Shepherd named Ollie. He bit me once and I never saw him again.

"You can't take her. I know what you are thinking."

And I was thinking it. I didn't want to leave her to become a starving teenage mother with a miserable life of three-to-five years, if that. She was sweet. She liked me. Treize didn't burst my bubble by mentioning that it was probably only because I fed her that she showed such great affection.

"I know."

There was no process for it, no quarantine, no vaccination and examination series. It was simply illegal. And, really, I had no business owning an animal with the schedule I kept, with the quarters I had. I fed her one more piece and pet her as she gobbled it down. She not only had fleas, she was riddled with them. I could feel their eggs and waste all along her neck.

"I saw a veterinary clinic near the hospital. We can, at the very least, have her spayed and deloused."

I looked up at him and saw on his face the sort of universal fondness for baby animals that even the most powerful of men couldn't claim immunity to.

"Got a case of puppy love?" I asked with a smirk as cheesy as my question.

He pushed himself away from the wall and put both hands in his pockets as he walked towards the mouth of the alley, sandals slapping against his heels with every step. "I'll ask Vikram for a box."

Xoxxooxoxoxoxo

It started with a movie, a love story that was magnitudes more complicated than it needed to be, viewed after a long day of walking around the city, photographing, eating, doing nothing in particular but enjoying each other's company, same as we'd done every single day since we'd arrived. Treize and I had stretched out on the bed next to each other and turned on the television with the slow, skeptical curiosity of two people unfamiliar with indulging in something so blatantly passive. Sitting there with him, leaning against a pillow-fortified headboard, brought a giddy twist of a smile to my mouth, one that I dared not let get too wide lest the rightness of the moment prove to be some strange, wonderful dream and nothing more. I threw my leg over his. He put his hand on my thigh. We snacked on fritters from a grease-stained paper bag.

We riffed the movie, creatively sorting out the convolutions, and at some point Treize said something so unspeakably raunchy - I can't remember exactly what it was, but it did contain the adjective "crusty" - that I poked him hard in the side with my finger. He squirmed and laughed, one of the only times I'd known him serene enough to react like that, and I pressed my unusual advantage with a full-on attack that concluded when I slid my hand down his pants and let him know that I was interested in more than his dirty jokes, which, of course, led to my moaning into the mattress as he fucked me hard, the catchy tune of a Bollywood dance number playing loudly in the background and doing a respectable job of covering up the noise we were making.

It was good. I felt good. Great. Fantastic. Calm. From India with our incommunicado status, our lives in the military seemed a wispy phantasm, a fading memory, and I couldn't even feign distress over my lack of interest in ever going back again.

The mattress sagged and rose as Treize got up out of bed. I watched him as he went to the balcony, deftly side-stepping our discarded clothing, the muscles of his naked back and shoulders unstrung and fluid as he walked. He snaked an arm around the drawn curtain to slide the door open, letting in fresh air. The room smelled like sex and sweat, and as I lay on my stomach, completely satisfied, chin resting on my crossed arms, I wondered lazily if maybe I shouldn't try to wipe up the stain I'd made on the sheet.

He walked to a small table next to the entertainment center and poured two glasses of purified water from a four-liter plastic jug. There really wasn't a drop of alcohol to be had in the whole city, and the absence of it during extended periods with Treize was unfamiliar but not at all unpleasant. It was refreshing not to wake up with a hang-over. It was enjoyable to converse with my friend without snide, nasty, insincere jibes sneaking in from behind a wall of intoxication. Drinking was the silent blight of the military, one of the few ways soldiers could legally decompress from the strains of the job. Treize and I weren't too good for it.

I sat up on my elbows and took the proffered drink, my fingertips still trembling. Treize lay on his stomach next to me and drained his entire glass, his Adam's apple sliding under his skin with every swallow. When he finished, he made the small "ah" sound that people make after a refreshing drink and pushed his damp hair out of his face with his wrist.

"Are you understanding any of this?" he asked, gesturing at the TV with his empty glass before throwing his arm over the edge of the bed and letting the cup drop to the rug with a dull thud.

The movie was still playing after an epic two and a half hours, and resolution still seemed to have evaded the haplessly clumsy, tactless protagonist who was, at that moment, on his knees begging his suave match-maker friend to turn him into a super-confident-ladies'-man-sex-god or something of that nature.

"Strangely, no less than before," I replied, reaching for the corner of the mattress to grab the remote that had been shoved to the side at some point during our tussle. I flicked through the channels with every intent to hurriedly skip over every news station, the terrible bearers of the world outside of our isolated mountain hideaway. British Broadcasting, American Broadcasting, Canadian Broadcasting, Chinese Broadcasting, Brazilian Broadcasting… It seemed like there were hundreds, and I bypassed the grim, attractive faces of at least eight pairs of anchors before the flash of the unmistakable captioned words "New Port City" stopped me. It wasn't a conscientious decision but rather something automatic, a paralysis that had lashed out like a bolt from some long-dormant charge. No longer opposable, my thumb hovered over the Channel Up button, frozen and useless.

Demonstrations. Throngs of people in the streets throwing Molotov cocktails and rocks. Local police and Federation "peace-keeping" soldiers in riot gear lobbing rubber bullets and canisters of tear gas in return. I choked back a comment about them at least using rubber, realizing that it made no difference, that the occupation was no less civil for it, the Federation presence no less disgusting to me. The protest was being led by the university students. Their faces were angry, smudged with dirt and blood, some half-covered with bandanas, some with strips of toothpaste under their eyes and noses. They'd done this before. They were organized, prepared, resolved. The mayor called for order, told them to think of my father, that he wouldn't have wanted them to use violence. He implored them, told them they were behaving shamefully. Stop. We are pacifists. Stop, and nobody will get hurt.

"Idiot," I whispered under my breath, my fingers tightening around my glass.

"What's that?"

"Invoking his name is insulting, cheap, and uninformed. There's nothing shameful about what they're doing."

"They are fighting." Careful words. Delicate. Obvious. Non-obtrusive. I rarely talked about Sanc or my family, though Treize was typically bent on gently keeping me prompted on subject whenever it consciously or accidentally came up. Most of the time I grumbled the topic away or mutely ignored what was an obvious attempt to get to know me better, but it was one of those rare nights when I actually felt like talking about it.

"My father fought for Sanc every single day. Just because he didn't have a nuclear arsenal doesn't mean that he would have put up with Federation occupation. He would have been right out there with him."

I'd once seen an archive photo of him, no older than I was at that time, chained to a minister's car after the man had cast the deciding, dissenting vote on legislature that would have mandated five weeks of vacation for every full-time employee in the country. My father had been young, handsome, his hair short, his clothes in the hippest youthful style of the time. He'd been cut away by the police and arrested, along with several other students. It'd caused an uproar and made the prince more of a national celebrity than he'd already been, the native son, the pride and future of Sanc. Predictably, my young father won his little war by a landslide when the bill's even more liberal incarnation, six full-paid weeks, came to the parliament the next year.

Treize turned on his side and regarded me with an interest that seemed almost innocent in its purity, free of cunning and ulterior motive. "Do you think he would have used similar methods?"

I could feel my eyes narrow. "He wasn't Ghandi." I was tensing all over again as I tried to hold at bay an onslaught of resentment, helplessness, regret, and countless other subversive, unwanted emotions. "The mayor lives in Colonel Ballesteros' pocket." I may have hated politics, but I knew Sancian politics better than anyone. I knew everything that went on there. Not because I felt I had to, but because I wanted to. Because I love Sanc. Because I always have.

Treize's hand, comforting in that it connected me to something more tangible than my feelings, ran over the dips and ridges of my back. "You want to go back, don't you?"

"To this?" Hell yes. I would have gladly been in such a demonstration. Perhaps in another life, one where I'd never been taken out of Sanc after the invasion, a fantasy I'd had about growing up hidden in the countryside to later return to New Port as a man, as a leader, a fighter of a different ilk, not a prince swathed in luxury but an angry student on the street… I could have settled for that. That could have been me. Even growing up in Russia with Treize, it still could have been me. The fact that it wasn't was nobody's fault but my own.

"You've never considered Russia home."

I absently reached over to put my still-full glass on the nightstand. "That's not true," I said, even though it was.

"Will you go back?"

"I want to." It was a reluctant admission, one heavy with concern about implications. What it meant for me. What it meant for Us. What it meant for my past and my future.

"I would go with you." He tucked my hair behind my ear. "If you wanted that," he added.

Blindsided by shock and something akin to joy, it's here that I forgot Treize Khushrenada Lesson 101, the most elementary tenant that begs scrutiny of even a word so innocuous-seeming as "would." I "would" go with you. Taken in a certain context, this tense that implies a condition to be unmet, as in "I 'would' go with you if I didn't plan on ending the war by destroying myself." Of course, it could just as easily have been polite phrasing, an attempt to sound unassuming, but in retrospect, it seemed an ominous and conscious choice.

"I couldn't ask you to do that." I wasn't being coy. I knew how much Treize loved Russia, the peace he felt when he was there, the only place he felt truly at peace, really. Perhaps that's something only our homelands can give us, why I felt like a life-long guest in the East, why every cell of my body ached for Sanc whenever I let it and sometimes when I didn't want it to.

Treize's proposal was nothing less than the summary of my most private and guiltily-tended hopes. It was another fantasy of mine – I had so many ideas and dreams of what I wanted my life to be. It was a domestic fantasy of a placid life with a garden and dozens and dozens beautiful Sancian summers together, until we were so old that we could only laugh and wonder how we ever had the energy for all of the drama and bickering and passion.

"Would you want me to?"

I've turned this question over and over in my mind – not the question itself, but the matter of whether or not I'd heard insecurity in his voice when he'd asked it. Had it been there, or did I insert it at some later point because I wanted it to be? That I can't remember his exact tone is distressing, and it feels like a tiny, invaluable treasure has slipped through my fingers, something I can never reclaim, something I have to fabricate because I can't handle the uncertainty borne of my fading memory.

"I mean, of course I would, but - "

He leaned in and almost touched his lips to my sweaty temple. "Wherever you are, that is where I most want to be."

I swallowed hard, but even so my words still came out thick. "You would?"

"Yes."

I rolled over onto my back and scrubbed my face with my hands, besieged by something I didn't have a name for. "I'm sorry."

"For what?"

It was scraping at the wall of my chest, something blunt and tightly coiled. It jabbed vaguely, sloppily when I tried to pinpoint it. I pushed the heels of my palms into my eye sockets as though it would stop the pressure building there.

"I'm not sure. Everything."

He draped his arm across my chest and rested his chin in the hollow of my collar. "Do you remember what you told me that day on the edge of that cliff?"

Did I remember it? It was one of the clearest, cleanest, most treasured memories I had. It was what I saw when I lost control of a prototype and didn't have the clearance to bail out. It was a band of colors so vibrant that I lost my breath and words when I attempted to describe it. It was a portrait of my childhood, of my country, of my best friend, of me, genuinely happy.

"'This is better than anything.'"

"You have nothing to apologize for."

The sound of the TV in the background was garbled, wordless, like mumbling in a pool. If I'd been listening, I might have heard the human interest sound bite about Vice Foreign Minister Darlian bringing his fourteen-year-old daughter with him on his upcoming tour of the colonies. I felt tired, faded, disappointed, upset, and I wasn't sure why.

Treize lifted his head and one-by-one coaxed my hands away from my face. I think he was just as surprised as I was at what lay underneath. "Milliardo?"

I was fifteen when I had my first real scare as a pilot. The impact had hurt, the mystery of the malfunction had chafed, but it was the claustrophobic crush that they'd spent more than four hours extracting me from that had driven me to tears. Panic. Something like a flashback - or a flashforward, if anybody believes that sort of crap. Nobody had seen me cry then, but I'd felt it on my cheeks.

The moment I registered the blurriness of Treize's face, I brushed my knuckles over my eyes, wiping away something I never wanted him to see.

"Ah, Milliardo..." He looked very sad when he kissed my brow.

I nodded.

Xoxoxoxoxoxoxox

It was the same plane. The tail number, a mash of five letters beginning with 'D' and ending with 'Y', was the same. We took the same seats, exchanged nods with the same crewmen, and poured drinks from the same mini bar. The whine of the engines was the same, something as individual as a fingerprint, something that only an experienced pilot can detect. I think even my clothes were the same, but not intentionally.

Gone, however, was the thrill, the excitement, the promise, the nervous flutter in my stomach, replaced by a flat line of dread. I'd let myself forget too much, too willingly let the weight of my responsibilities drown in a sink full of shaving water. Zechs Merquise didn't seem at all important anymore, to the world or to me, and it had only taken two weeks in unfamiliar surroundings playing pretend to make me wish I'd never taken him up in the first place. I stared out the window, at the New Port Bay-blue of the sky. We were chasing the sun, and we would be tired when we reported for duty the next day.

Treize was on the phone with Une, informing her of our return, taking in status reports with smooth nods and chicken-scratch shorthand scrawled with a stylus on the touch screen of his laptop. Treize wrote with the can't-be-bothered-with-neatness strokes of a mathematician bursting at the seams with fast-cropping, revolutionary ideas, which contrasted startlingly with the practiced, fluid flourish of his signature, one everybody recognized but nobody could quite reproduce. He showed no signs of remorse over the end of our vacation, though he must have felt it. He must have. But OZ Commander Treize Khushrenada could not lament his position openly, not even to his best friend, not anymore. He'd grown past that, hardened himself to the point of disallowing all entry into the cold vault that contained his doubt, his exhaustion, his fear, and selfish, secret desire for career-abandonment.

He ended the conversation with a small, neutral smile that carried in his voice and a pre-packaged phrase about being glad to return to work. His phone, the same as mine except with a more chipper ring, was dropped into a small hole in the table that was supposed to be for cups.

"I have a ticket to 'Carmen' on the seventh. Two tickets, actually."

"Can't. Orbital patrol rotation with Third Group."

"Who is going with you?"

"Otto, Pak, Graham, and Gruber, I think."

"Perhaps you will see some action."

"Perhaps."

He twisted back and forth in his chair, which had a lot of give to it and rotated 360 degrees like 10,000 credit-per-day reclining barstool.

"Do you have to do that?"

"No." He stopped. "The Taurus units are on schedule for Corps-wide implementation."

I remained silent.

"Noin's seniors have already begun training on them."

"Just knock it off, will you?"

He rocked his seat back and knitted his fingers together over the plank-flatness of his stomach."Vacations cannot last forever, Zechs."

"You've bounced back easily enough."

He seemed to be bouncing, rocking his chair back and letting it revert to its original position over and over and over, albeit slowly, contemplatively.

"Because I have to. We both have to. We cannot afford not to."

"It was a bad idea."

The rocking stopped for the single intake of a breath before resuming. "Was it?"

"I'm so sick of this shit, and it hasn't even begun yet."

"Remember why you joined."

"I joined because of you. To be with you."

He straightened and sat properly as though finding his own behavior quite suddenly juvenile. "And for your revenge."

"Fuck it. There's no place for it."

"There will be." His tone was dark. Serious. There was something in it that was enticing, perhaps even sexy. "Soon. You can put a bullet in Onegell's head personally, if you'd like."

There was a time when I would have committed any sin for the opportunity to murder the man who had led the attack on Sanc. But on that particular day the thought seemed cruel, petty, over-dramatically bloodthirsty, and pointless. I'd been away and out of uniform for too long. I no longer saw red. I saw azure shores. I saw the life we could have had if we'd only lived it differently.

I continued to stare out the window, biting my thumbnail not out of habit but to distract myself from my thoughts, from the way Treize was looking at me, from the hurt. The impossibility of being anything different from what we were was painful. There was nothing feasible about what I wanted for us. Not at that time. Not ever.

"I want to go back to India with you."

"That would be wonderful."

"Tell me we'll go back."

His eyes were clear, bright, and tranquil. There was no deception there, no intent, no doubt. "As many times as you want."

Maybe he was thinking of his own fantasy, the only place where our lives intersected in a way that wasn't inherently doomed, the only place we could ever have a happy ending.

"I forgot to tell you - Vikram's younger son had his tenth birthday yesterday."

"Hm."

"I heard he got a puppy."

I turned my head, and for approximately 2,000 revolutions of the twin wing-mounted jet engines, I saw the man I'd spent the past two weeks with, the man who, for all his complications, mysteries, and difficulties, had always been my dearest friend. He loved me. I knew it. He almost never told me in so many words, but he rarely let me forget it.

"Thank you."

1699.0004

Silence.

Why wasn't I satisfied? I'd worked hard to get the device online. It was proof, in some way, that I was still useful, that I could do something for a living besides working in the murder industry. Certainly it wasn't the most virtuous of undertakings, considering the immense ethical impropriety, but it really was a technological accomplishment. As far as I knew, the military had never developed a unit quite so elegant, compact, and powerful.

So why wasn't I satisfied?

Silence.

And then…

/ "Fire, this is Water. Radio check, over."/

Code names? Interesting, if only because it wasn't another telephone conversation between quarreling lovers or businessmen. In the silence that filled the room as we waited for Fire, I wondered who this Water woman was. Perhaps she was a spy. Perhaps she was an agent of the federal government. Perhaps she was calling out to her paramour. Perhaps my imagination was lacking.

The military had been fond of code names, call signs, mascots, and other intra-unit colloquialisms that would baffle anybody not affiliated. Some units considered it an goal to have the most abstract or outrageous code names permissible. One commander I served under chose his call signs based on all the women he'd slept with, which allowed him to go by names like "Nancy" and "Carmelita," something that was not only tacky and completely lacking in humor but, frankly, gross.

/ "Water, this is Fire. Radio check confirmed, over."/

Noin?

I felt myself leaning forward, hunching again but not caring. That was Noin, no doubt in my mind. I knew her voice, had known it since she was thirteen, had heard it change little by little over the years. Lucrezia Noin's voice was firm even before she commanded anybody in uniform. The year we met, it was the self-assured, measured voice of the older sister who kept her brothers Marco and Gianni in line. It faltered one year, her first year as junior instructor, when she found out that they called her a dyke behind her back, because why else would she be in the military. They didn't know that it was because she wanted to fly in space, because she used to sit on a grassy hill on so many humid-hot summer nights and imagine being in one of the shuttles that rocketed up the Valentino Moretti Space Port launch spire number three, the one closest to the south end of the field, the one she rode her father's old motorcycle to to watch the 14th shift cargo launches - cargo because they were huge ships, and the rumble of their afterburners made her insides shiver with excitement...

Noin's voice made sense to me, and in the context of the transmission I was illegally monitoring, it proved one of my speculations about the nature of the code names. The moment I'd read about the Preventers and confirmed that she'd survived the war, I was certain that she'd be a part of the new government's defense force. She'd put so much of herself into what had happened, whatever adjectives people ascribed to what we did, that there was no way she would simply leave it to the ESUN to attend to the fragile state of the union. Ex-soldiers like Noin were the foundation of the agency, which was good and bad, though more good than bad. Having a surplus of skilled pilots on hand has never been any paramilitary's chief complaint.

/ "How's it looking on your end?"/

I missed her. She was one of the two people in the world who ever really liked me and the only one of those two who was still alive. People never particularly liked me. Ever. Not as a child, not as a teenager, not as an adult. Tolerated me, loved me, respected me, yes, yes, yes, but like? Like is different. I've never had an abundance of like in my life. Noin and I had grown close again around the time I defected, especially when I was chasing Heero Yuy around and disobeying orders by reconstructing 01 in order to lure him to me.

Later, she'd symbolically donned my family's coat of arms to watch over Relena and Sanc while I was gallivanting around space pretending to be a diplomat and, when that failed, hack-and-slashing as many mobile dolls as I could get my hands on like a blind, directionless, angry child smashing his toys in a rage, like those boys who came to my room when I was a child and crashed my cars together because that seemed to them to be the point of their existence. Of course I'd arrived in Sanc too late to do anything about the Romefeller invasion…

/ "I've got nothing. My sensors are cold."/

And then, God, I was so terrible to her. I can still hear the horror in her reaction after I explained with utmost seriousness that I believed the solution to war was to destroy Earth. Never before had she been a truer friend than when she tried to hold me back, her nature so immutably good, and never had I been crueler to her than when I shoved her away and left her to the mobile dolls. I killed over 400 soldiers on Barge that day, people who had at one time been my comrades, commanders, and subordinates. People who'd entrusted me with their lives.

Sometimes I don't even remember why.

/ "How could we lose that much metal? Where the hell could they possibly be hiding it?"/

I wondered if she was talking about Gundanium. I couldn't think of another metal that would cause such distress.

Unless, of course, she was referring to the fabled Thirteenth Constellation. It had been in the barest stages of production when I left OZ, more parts rumor than actuality, like the Tallgeese II and III. But in the chaos of the various schisms and reformations of the world's defense forces, detailed plans could easily have been leaked in a moment of spite by a disgruntled R&D staffer. Probably Dr. Loubser. I knew they'd swept the Earth and colonies for Gundanium back in February, but large amounts of neo-titanium, with its multiple industrial uses, could easily have gone unrecorded. The Preventers must have had some other reason to suspect that trouble was on the horizon.

/ "We just don't have enough people up here. Simple as that."/ The unidentified woman sighed as though she'd had quite enough of that fact.

/ "I can understand that people would prefer that the defense budget be smaller than the education budget, but I think even the Department of Forestry gets a bigger cut than we do. Let's hope she gets that bill through the legislature, or it'll just be you and me out here shaking sticks."/

/ "You'd better watch your tone, young lady. We can't have any rabblerousing in the ranks now, can we?"/

Noin laughed wryly. / "If this blows up in our faces, you know they're going to blame it on us."/

/ "If this turns into what we think it might, we'll have much more than flack from the government to contend with."/

Damn right. If they didn't even have enough resources to run routine patrols, there was no way they could fend off a large or even mid-scale insurgency. They'd already decommissioned the overwhelming majority of operational mobile suits in the spirit of peace – a stupid move, were anybody to ask my opinion on it. The Gundam pilots didn't seem to be anywhere, except for the celebrated heir to the Winner Corporation, who seemed too busy turning phrases and credits to give the Preventers the time of day. He'd given several public announcements on the state of the company during 196, and, after watching a few, I'd decided that he reminded me of Treize. Still does.

/ "I really hope that we're wrong."/

As did I, but years of training and field experience had given Noin a keen gut. She was typically not one to exaggerate or extrapolate to illogical conclusions. If she ventured the implication that a colonial force was amassing, she did so only after eliminating every other rational explanation.

I wanted to be there badly, so badly that I felt urgently compelled to leave for Brussels that night. Or was it morning?

But what would I say when I got there? Would I simply walk into Director Une's office and ask for a job? I didn't think there was any way I could start working again without the public clamoring for something from me – an arrest, a summons, something. Anything. Perhaps a lock of hair and an apology. I was, after all, trying to be optimistic.

I sighed and hated what I had to do next. I couldn't keep the receiver online, no matter how curious I was. I was done with trying to justify immoral behavior, something that had come to me naturally after years of studying with the master. Aside from his relationship with me, that had always been Treize's greatest flaw.

Shortly after the sun came up, Vadimas met me in the cellar and I showed him that his invention worked beautifully. He smiled and laughed and said "I told you so." He then validated my do-gooder attitude by deleting the program from the computer's memory. Without the program, the device was a glorified doorstop. Without the program, the only thing left behind was the work I'd done.

"That's appropriate," he told me as he closed down the CAD program I'd been referencing. "Out with the old and in with the new."

"Sometimes the new isn't better."

"Bah! You need an attitude adjustment, young man. The new is all this world has got! And, like it or not, that includes you."

"You're oversimplifying."

"What's so complicated about it?" he asked, resting his hands on his hips like a weary mother. "You going to stay here forever? I like you, but I don't think you're happy here."

Happy? Since when did I deserve that?

"No, I won't. I was thinking that I might…" I paused, not sure if I believed what I was saying, "…go to Brussels."

Vadimas beamed at me, his tea-stained teeth a brownish, uneven line. "Good! They could use some talent there. Lord knows what trouble's brewing on the lunatic fringe. And anyway, somebody's got to watch over that sister of yours. She's a firecracker!"

I wanted to tell him that there were entire security detachments dedicated to keeping Relena from the creeps and scoundrels of the universe, but his words kindled something old and familiar in me. It was like hearing my father's plea when I was four, essentially asking me to not hate the new baby, please, but I knew that she no longer needed me if she ever did at all. I doubted she would have much use for a deadbeat big brother, or worse, a deadbeat big brother in prison for war crimes.

Going back was a high-stakes wager, but that's the only way I tend to gamble. Either the ESUN would grant me leave under the blanket pardon they'd issued to everybody who was anybody, or they'd lynch me. I gave myself 3:1 odds on the latter.

"She's grown up," I said, recalling the latest picture I'd seen of her. In it, she was wearing a suit. Christ, how old was she? Sixteen? Not even I wore a suit, and I'd turned twenty somewhere between swallowing fistfuls of pills and fantasizing about my dead boyfriend.

What would I say to her? Wouldn't "sorry" be tantamount to insult? Who the hell says "sorry" for trying to destroy Earth? It wasn't as though I'd accidentally elbowed her in the breast (which I've done more often than I'd prefer to recall, something I'm doomed to repeat because of her height relative to mine and her penchant for standing too close). I'd purposefully fired Libra's cannon with her right in the crosshairs, trusting only the reflexes of our old butler to save her from vaporizing into my deepest regret. I'd also pissed on everything she held dear and then flaunted it in her face like a malicious prick. Remembering that…what the hell had I been thinking?

Many things, most barely rational, and I had to accept that. It was the only way I could hope to move on.

"Brussels, eh? Big, big city. Center of the world now. When will you go?"

I gave him a one-shouldered shrug. "Next month, probably."

I wasn't brave enough to go to Brussels just then. I promised myself one last month in Picardy, and then, just in time for the anniversary of Treize's death, a return.


	9. Cause and Effect

Title: Limbo

Chapter: 9/12: Cause and Effect

Pairing: Past Treize/Zechs (made present-tense via flashbacks)

Spoliers: Series, EW

Warnings: Death themes, male/male sexual situations, foul language, grief, angst, cynicism, debatable instances of sap. Depictions of violence in this chapter. Little kid-ness. Flashbacks throughout. Rated M for swears and darkness

Disclaimer: I don't own any part of GW. No monies have been or will be made off of this thing.

Note: Please don't hate too much on my verb tenses, if you find mistakes. I've had a huge problem with them in this chapter. I don' t know why. And yes, I know that titles of books are traditionally underlined, but it just looks weird here.

Please see Limbo 1 for very important notes.

This chapter is more or less and interlude. With cake. There's some flashback-within-flashback action, so the guide's as follows:

xxxx: separates main story from flashbacks

xoxo: separates flashback segments

Very special thanks to LH, who is so lovely and supportive, who challenges me, and who makes me laugh and cry with his beautiful writing. You're like the chewed pencil that I never want to give up.

Hope you enjoy.

I bought a suit. Should I have been especially proud of this? Probably not. Most adult men have at least one suit, something they wear to weddings and funerals and retirement parties, et cetera, ad nauseum, normal things that one does in life. The suit I ordered in France was grey. Black seemed too pallbearer, brown too muddy, and blue too reminiscent or tacky, depending on the shade. White was simply inappropriate, and red was so passé, so I settled with grey.

"My neighbor's wife is a seamstress. I'll have her over and she can fix you up," Vadimas told me when he saw the look on my face as I realized that the pants and coat were unhemmed. Of course they weren't hemmed. I should have know as much, having been fitted countless times for suits both in Sanc and Russia, but in France many practicalities from earlier life had escaped me.

"You think she won't have a problem hemming my pants?"

"Why would she?"

I looked at him and blinked a couple of times.

"Oh! Oh, she won't know you from Adam." He pointed one gnarled finger at his own head.

"What's that supposed to mean?"

"They say it's Alzheimer's, but she doesn't respond to the treatment. I think she's faking it."

Aggravated but not surprised by my own lack of foresight in the matter, I crammed the suit back into the box, heedless of the wrinkles I was risking. "Why would she do that?"

"Why? To fool everybody else, that's why. We oldsters deserve to have a little bit of fun, don't we?"

I remembered certain old ladies who'd had more than their share of fun fooling people, disseminating hellishly devious and patently untrue gossip just for the sake of entertainment. Although, not all of it was untrue. They'd caught onto Treize and me before anybody else, and I'm inclined to think it was because they were bored, overly-imaginative, and liked the look of us together...

"What are you thinking about?" Vadimas asked.

"What? What do you mean?" I shot back. "I'm not thinking about anything."

"You're smiling!" He tilted his head to the side inquisitively. "What's going through that head of yours?"

Smiling? I'd been thinking of Treize. I wondered when those two things had begun coinciding.

I tossed the box onto Vadimas' kitchen table and muttered "Nothing" as I wandered to his living room to wait for the neighbor's wife, the first person besides Vadimas who I would see in ten months.

I'd been thinking about the salty old Lady Westwick catching Treize and me in a compromising position after a clipped argument about God knows what in the library of the Romefeller headquarters building during one tear-wringingly boring party or another. Who could possibly remember the specifics of all the arguments we had, the ridiculous, inconsequential, ludicrous disagreements? I'd turned and was ready to walk away from it, figuring that he wouldn't pursue or yell in my wake, but he did both in reverse order, stormed behind me, grabbed my wrist and spat some more jibes in my face. I shut him up by kissing him, which outraged him even further until I kissed him again and pushed him back into one of the library's alcoves, right up against the shelves, right next to a marble bust of The Bard, and we made out in an angry, pent-up sort of way until the slow clacking of heels on marble made us pull back and strain to halt the heaving of our intermingling breaths. Treize, looking over my shoulder, said he saw nobody and heard the clicks receding. And as we waited for our bodies to return to a state that wouldn't scandalize everybody who dared lower their eyes, we determined that we hadn't been discovered –

– until we walked out, back to the party, and passed the desiccated husk of the ancient Widow Westwick sitting on a stuffed settee in the hall, chuckling, no, _cackling_ at us and patting her paper-skin, wrinkled hand on her bony knee. Nothing came of it except a little fun for her and the other harmless biddies she shared juicy stories with. They weren't cruel, and their years had made them unflappable. In many ways, they were more liberal than their grandchildren, probably because they considered themselves too old to waste time moralizing.

Treize and I used to joke about aging. It was such an absurd notion to us, eternally young and brimming with vitality - almost as absurd as having any real life together beyond the hastily basted patchwork called Us. But we laughed it up, pretended we'd be lucky (or, we debated, unlucky) enough to see each other grow old. We'd always shared a similar sense of humor, one marked by a fondness of satire but one not unmoved displays of immaturity and, occasionally, slapstick. We nearly had twin aneurisms trying to hold back our laughter once after watching Engineer Tsubarov take a tumble on a patch of black ice, which was funny only because of the curious rush of expletives that accompanied his Homeric struggle to regain sure footing.

Never before had we heard the phrase "Bastard shit-fucking ice, God damn it!" Treize and I devoted upwards of a (drunken) hour of our lives to deciding if it was 'Bastard, shit, fucking ice' or 'Bastard shit-fucking ice,' choosing the latter after careful (drunken) consideration. I would later revive this obscenity with impressive accuracy when I wiped out on a slick winter walkway that had yet to be salted. Fortunately, we were at home, and the only other person who heard it besides Treize was the old-as-dirt, should-be-retired housekeeper who was weakly shaking a rug out of an open window. Her mole-covered jowls shook when she yelled to me that I ought to be more careful and that my gutter mouth made my face look ugly.

Despite their usual lack of deployment from his lips, Treize knew a children's treasury of ways to describe in Russian how he would fuck your mother, which I'm fairly certain is the most degrading insult in the culture. He'd fuck your mother while whistling, he'd fuck her on a steamboat, and he'd fuck her while whistling, on a steamboat, through the Seven Gates of Hell. It all sounded as beautiful as poetry to me, and sometimes Treize would humor me by rattling off an epic string of embarrassingly crude insults with a sultriness that would make my eyes glaze over. When I speak it, of course, I sound like an fat-tongued idiot, but I always like to listen. Sometimes I'll log on to one of the Russian news stations and leave it playing in the background while I work, which seems a bit infantile when I think of it, like some sort of gently whooshing uterine metronome that I need to stay content.

Treize wasn't often propelled to real anger, tending towards irritation and unkindness. He was more often known to lapse into phases of pensive dejection that made him quiet and standoffish. To cope, he'd bury himself in serious pursuits, problem-solving, planning and scheming his way back to normalcy. Some of his most brilliant and audacious work was produced in these pockets of sullenness. I remember the first time I saw him like that, the first time he was comfortable enough to let that aspect of his humanity show. It'd been a difficult lesson, but I'd coped quite well, I'd say.

"It looks terrible."

Irina Khushrenada set two white shopping bags down on the long, wooden console table near the entryway. Her twelve-year-old son, trailing lugubriously behind her, shut the front door harder than necessary, causing the painting on the wall to slant just slightly out alignment.

I watched them from a small sitting area just off the side of one of the two grand, sweeping staircases that merged in a high arch above me. I'd kept to my book the whole time they'd been gone, my typical daily occupation. I'd read 1/32 of the books Treize kept in his room, one fourth of one of the eight vertical shelves that covered two of his four walls. So many of them were in Russian, but he'd been kind enough to rearrange them for me one weekend so that all of the Standard editions were collected on shelves low enough for my easy access. Peering over the top of my book, one about Russian folklore, I could see that Treize was in an uncharacteristically foul mood. He didn't even acknowledge my presence as his legs swept him past me to mirror mounted on the wall. He bared his teeth like an animal growling at itself and scowled.

"They're terrible," he repeated, glaring at his mother, who was idly unpacking her purchases. A silken blouse, a pair of slacks, two pairs of shoes. Whenever she went to the city, she came back with clothes.

She gave him a mild smile, one that spoke both of her rigid bearing and her fondness for her only child. "You can barely see them. They're supposed to be invisible."

"Well, they're not. They look stupid. My teeth are practically straight already."

"The orthodontist said that they will only get worse in the next couple of years. You don't want crooked teeth at the academy, do you?"

He snorted. I hadn't known him very long at that point, but I knew that the answer was a definitive "No." He might have been the vainest boy I'd ever known, and he had every intention of making a stellar, flawless name for himself as a plebe.

Irina spotted me spying on her and her smile broadened. Her hair, the same color as Treize's, was down, framing the feminine curves her heart-shaped face. She dressed in the latest fashion when she went to Moscow, a 20 minute flight from the small airport located in the nearest town, which was thirty minutes away by car. Irina flew her own single-engine prop plane, favoring a slow, scenic ride over the harsh, screaming thrust of a jet aircraft. Oftentimes she would let Treize take the controls, even without lessons, even at such a young age, trusting his dexterity, his seriousness, and his unerring desire to impress. The estate was close enough that she still considered herself a Muscovite, and I sensed that she tolerated the placidity of rural life only because she could so easily "return to civilization," as she put it.

"Don't mind him," she said to me. "He's unhappy."

My gaze shifted back to my friend, who was fake-grinning at himself in the mirror, his eyebrows knitted together in scorn.

"I'm standing right here, Mother. You don't need to talk about me like I'm not."

"Watch your mouth," she warned, no longer smiling.

Treize didn't apologize, but he didn't venture any more complaints just then. He continued examining himself in the mirror, running his tongue along the contours of the clear plastic.

His mother laughed very quietly, so softly that I could barely hear it, as she climbed the stairway. "You'll thank me when you're older, Treize," which was such a cliché thing to say, but she was right. He would one day look back on his behavior with shaking head and rueful, straight-toothed smile.

"We'll see about that," he grumbled after she was out of earshot. In the mirror, he caught me looking at his reflection.

"Hello, Zechs," he greeted half-heartedly. His mouth settled into a displeased frown. "Can you see them from where you're sitting?"

I shook my head.

He sighed, shrugged off his jacket, and hung it in the closet. "I'm going to go to my room. I'll see you later." With that, he bypassed me once more and walked slowly up the stairs, leaving me alone in the massive vestibule.

After that, he was inconsolable. He completely stopped smiling and began mumbling as he spoke to avoid showing even the barest hint of his orthodontia. His father scolded him over the vidphone and told him he was being juvenile, that he didn't have his priorities straight, to which Treize replied, "And what priorities do you think I should have?" That started an argument between them that ended with Pyotr saying in a low voice that he was sorry for not being home, but that Treize was going to have to learn when to expend his energies and when to let go. Treize didn't like that answer and made the highly unusual decision to hang up without saying goodbye.

I should take a moment to mention that Treize was beloved and coddled by the entire house staff. They loved Pyotr immensely and found his wife mostly agreeable, and when Irina had a complicated pregnancy and was told she could have no more children, the staff swept down upon Treize like he was humanity's last hope for survival, the last boy on Earth. This is, at least, until I arrived and siphoned off a share of the attention by being the solemn, tragically orphaned Princeling who was - my goodness - they'd never seen a more beautiful boy... except for Treize, they'd hasten to add when he was around, though he was smart enough to know when he'd been beaten in the good looks department, even if only by the barest of highly subjective measures.

Lara, the young cook and Ukrainian immigrant, adored Treize especially. She took her job seriously, knowing exactly what foods to prepare for what mood, season, and occasion. She'd taken a sisterly liking to me and was eager to learn what foods I might have eaten in Sanc so she could prepare them for me. When she first started pursuing the matter, I was less than forthcoming, so she pulled out pictures of several popular dishes and pointed to them and asked, "Did you eat this one? How about this? Does this look familiar?" I shook my head or nodded accordingly while she took diligent notes on my responses. Then one day, the day of my seventh birthday, she made a Sancian banquet-style meal that even Pyotr came home to enjoy. I remember having to leave the table half way through because I couldn't stop crying. She followed me, also crying, apologizing profusely, and she held me while she explained that she only wanted to make me feel at home. I favored her above the rest of the household staff, and, actually, I liked her more than I liked either of Treize's parents. She was soft and affectionate and shamelessly emotional.

I remember one of the few times Lara asked me to join her in the kitchen, a day about three weeks into Treize's orthodontic crisis. She told me years later that she would have invited me more often except that Madame didn't consider such a hobby especially appropriate for me, finding it a little too – oh, let me guess – _queer_ for her tastes. (I am not displeased by the irony.) It was a cold and rainy day, which had compelled me to sit at my desk and watch the raindrops cascade in long, trickling paths down the window. She knocked softly on the open door to get my attention, and when I turned to look at her, she was holding a child-sized apron and smiling sadly. She said that Treize was in the library studying for entrance exams, which I already knew...

"So," she asked, "wouldn't you like to help me bake a special surprise to help bring around our grouchy Mr. Hyde?"

I agreed, even though I didn't yet know who Mr. Hyde was.

"Treize loves Kirschtorte," she said as I followed her to the kitchen. She'd had one of the other women make my apron the week before, a request that had probably made them coo and twitter at the thought of how I'd look in it. On the counter was a thick book opened to a picture with a caption that read "Black Forest Gateau." She pointed to the picture and raised her eyebrows at me. Her blonde, Slavic beauty was stereotypical but no less remarkable for being so. "Will you help me make it?"

"I don't know how," I eked out.

Lara bent down and gently held my head in her slender hands. "Don't worry, darling. I'll show you. We'll do it together. Wouldn't you like that?"

I nodded.

We collected ingredients from a pantry that was as big as my bedroom and laid them all out on a large island in the middle of the kitchen. She pulled up a high stool so that I could work comfortably next to her, and, like two children emptying a toy box, we pulled out so many measuring cups and spoons and utensils that I couldn't believe that we'd use all of them, even though we did.

"Good cake," she said, "means good work. If you don't measure everything perfectly, your cake will fail."

Those were terms that I could relate to, since I've always been a stickler for exactness. When she said that 200 grams meant 200 grams and not 210 or 190, I understood completely. I even agreed, though I knew as much about baking at that time as I did about engineering. It was the principle that I was confident in.

She was a patient teacher, taking the time to show me the proper way to measure out flour and the right technique for cracking an egg. She wasn't condescending, and she even let me use the hand mixer. We ate cherries as we went along, and she poured me a few naughty milliliters of Kirschwasser so that I knew what it tasted like. She instructed me in the Russian words for each item, each process, and encouraged me to speak the language as much as I could. She would occasionally take pause to give me a Ukrainian translation, but only to make a point about how different the languages could be, and she would comment about how undesirable the Russian language assimilation efforts had been, how it was left to the rural communities to keep the language alive while the government and corporations pushed for more imported broadcasts and publications. She explained these things in terms I could verbally understand, though conceptually I couldn't comprehend why a government would do that. I believe that Lara's lesson about Russo-Ukrainian strain was my first intentional instruction on the topic of politics.

We worked for over two hours, taking our time with the decoration, filling and emptying the piping bag, giving our best effort to make it look exactly like the picture. And she gave small words of encouragement, never to excess, always with a bright glimmer in her hazel eyes. "Oh, Zechs, that looks lovely!" "Oh, Zechs, that's perfectly like the photograph!" Her kind praise helped me come to accept the sound of my new name, something I thought would never happen, something I wonder if she realized she was doing.

"One more to go," she said, gesturing to the small bowl of dark, ripe cherries. "I think you should have this one."

I could feel the faintest of smiles creeping onto my lips as I placed the cherry upon the last of the small mounds of frosting that formed a circle around the top of the cake. It was a glorious cake, and it was the first thing I'd been proud of in a very long time. If I could go back, I would take a picture of it so I could have something to look at on those days where I couldn't remember a single thing I'd ever done right.

"If this doesn't make him smile, I don't know what will," Lara said as she led me from the kitchen and to a small table in what I suppose might be described as a breakfast nook. She set the cake stand in the middle and pulled together two place settings using dishes and utensils from the hutch in the corner of the room.

"Do you want to go get him, or do you want me to?"

"I'll do it," I replied, growing excited at the thought of how much he'd appreciate what we'd made for him. I wanted so badly to please him, to make a permanent mark on him. I wanted to show him that I was grateful for the friend he'd always been, even when I was pathetic and broken up.

Lara grinned and tucked my hair behind my ears. "Let me know how it goes."

I found him in the library sitting in an overstuffed chair, his legs draped over one of the arms and a heavy physics textbook in his hands. He had blown through three math books since I'd arrived at the household and was already dabbling with calculus. He loved physics, taking great pleasure in learning the technicalities of the universe, deconstructing the simplest of cosmic expressions – a breeze, a fire, a vacuum, a whisper. It was all wondrous and worth learning, made exponentially more important by its relevance to his career choice.

The study of it was where his natural gravitation towards inquiry merged with the notion that he had to do something important, be someone more, reach for something beyond cold actuality, far beyond Russia, the Earth, the galaxy, all the way to infinity. He wanted to reach into it and pull out something magical and immortal, something he could give, something that would fill a void in the world that he couldn't define at that age. It was so nebulous, but the longing was there. That was the real reason he went to Lake Victoria – to hurl himself into the unknown with hopes of maybe finding what he sought, a salve, a cure, a bandage to tend a damaged history of bloody repetition...

xoxoxoxoxoxox

It started the day I got there, the inability to sleep, the inability to close my eyes without seeing things that would make me tense so hard that I thought I'd snap, a tension that I thought I might be able to release if only I could scream. But I didn't, couldn't, because I was somewhere else then. Everything I'd had was gone, scattered, engulfed, smeared, ruined, and all I had left was an enormous, drafty house in a country I'd never visited with people I barely knew. From the day I arrived, a day I don't even remember, Treize regarded me with the hushed attentiveness of a scientific researcher, always observing me, no longer effusing with cheerful eloquence as he'd been before in Sanc. He was quiet and continuous. For a while I didn't know if he knew what had happened, why exactly I was there beyond the obvious fact that my parents were dead and his mother had been my mother's closest friend. During the day he went wherever I went, which was usually nowhere, and watched me with a small, perpetual smile on his lips that somehow always seemed fresh.

He never asked me about it. He didn't ask me much of anything but just sat with me in the room they gave me, the one across the hall from his that had a neutral color palette, reserved for a second baby that never came. We would go hours without speaking, ensconced in a silence too dense to hold anything, not even discomfort. I had no comments for him, no jutted-chin challenges, no claims to stake, no contentious jabs, no questions. At that time I didn't care about unraveling his mystery, punching through his armor, because there wasn't anything mysterious or guarded about the way he was with me then. He was as open as I've ever known him, sensitive on a level far beyond his years to what I needed from him, something undemanding, a warm space, a person who wanted nothing and offered everything without provision.

Eventually, the darkness of my room would fade seamlessly into a state of dreamless, death-like sleep, something I would only be aware of after I woke up to the sun soaking the room in a gauzy light that felt fluffy and surreal until I remembered where I was and why. Soon after I awoke, Treize would knock softly on my door, peek his head in, smile with a softness that radiated mostly from his eyes, tell me that it was time for breakfast and that if I wanted anything special to eat I should tell him, to which I always shook my head. I could have set a watch by the exchange if I'd cared at all about time. The household ran like the military even when Pyotr was gone, the kitchen like a DFAC serving on a schedule. It left little room for whim, an odd choice for a family rich enough to afford plenty. It was a routine that kept me afloat but one that also made every day seem an unvarying repetition of the one prior.

I was too young then to wonder whether Treize's father had known the Federation's plans, considering his position in the MI branch and, if he did, why he didn't warn anybody. The truth, I'd discover later, was that the branch had been purposefully left out of the loop; Onegell had relied on old reports and a handpicked team from Signals to carry out the intel for the operation. The attack was something so risky and unenlightened that it wasn't revealed to the eggheads at the branch because they would have protested it into nonexistence on cultural and political grounds, if not philosophical ones. Treize's father had been an intellectual, had studied at the finest institutions in Europe, a dark-haired, darkly handsome, brooding man who looked like a poorly-cast actor in a costume when he wore his uniform, too professorial to play the role of trained killer convincingly. He was also a man, they said, who took pills because he was depressed, though I could never confirm this.

Pyotr earned his high rank by being the smartest son-of-a-bitch in every room he ever walked into and a man who knew a few things about upward mobility and closed-door diplomacy. He understood the most delicate and complex of domestic and international dynamics and had very little patience for the frivolities of his social class. He was the kind of man who would have laughed mockingly if a Sancian invasion had been seriously suggested to him, if only because he'd done a semester in New Port as an undergraduate and, even as a Russian, had been impressed with the hard, unsmiling sensibility and devout nationalism of the country's citizens. MI knew exactly what my father meant to the country, the region, the continent, the rest of the world, and the colonies, and they correctly predicted that any Federation aggression against him would send shockwaves around the Earth Sphere for decades.

They understood cause and effect, knew that Sancians were tough, unrelenting people who would never let the occupying forces rest, who would compel others to turn their backs on the Federation and its mysterious backers like Romefeller. Resistance cells had the Federation infiltrated at all levels, either through direct, fraudulent enlistments or by manipulations of underpaid, over-hassled, scarred and paranoid occupation forces with bribes, exchanges, and blackmail. They rigged docked mobile suits with explosives, hacked into defense nets from remote ghost servers in Lithuania, Poland, and Russia, and held Sancian mistresses and unspeakable acts of violent suppression over the heads of men and women who masqueraded around the global stage as respectable, honorable leaders. They had wide webs of contacts in the largest news corporations in the world and routinely flooded the nets with raw footage exposing the Federation as every bit the cruel, totalitarian terror-machine it was. The invasion had been a blind, ferocious, ill-advised offensive, and while the initial strike had been exceedingly well calculated in the tactical sense, the cost in Sancian and international resistance over the years would later warrant its classification as a catastrophic failure.

The night I discovered Treize's secret was only two weeks after the invasion. I know because the moon was full, severe as a searchlight through my window. It had been pitch black the night Sanc fell, the new moon, predictable if we'd ever suspected the Federation would do something so brutal to us. Nights in the Khushrenada house weren't silent. The place creaked, groaned, and sometimes it squeaked when the wind blew. But as I lay there that particular night, soaking up the sounds with a mind as blank as the expression on my face, I heard something different from shifting wood and scraping branches. The sound was dampened, the sound of a human voice on top of the sound of quick, rhythmic thwaps and atonal rumbles, and, between them, splices of high-pitched sounds that were screams, no doubting it. That was a sound I would never again mistake for anything else, the sound of a woman screaming, women screaming as they knelt over the bodies of their loved ones, writhed on the ground, shot or full of shrapnel… I'd seen it all, heard it all in a blur as I ran faster than I ever had, each gruesome encounter making me run harder if only to get away from it…

The sounds made my chest feel so heavy that I thought it might crush me, if such things were possible, so I grabbed the thickness of the down duvet and pulled myself to sit up. My hair stuck to my cheeks and neck, my too-large nightshirt to my back, and I had to get out of that hot casserole of a bed or else I was sure that I really would scream and wake up everybody in the house.

All the upstairs rooms were covered by thick carpet, the kind you could lie down on and easily fall asleep. Between my bare toes, it felt almost as soft as grass after all the dew had evaporated away. I made no sound as I turned the knob on my door and began to pull. I knew where the scrape in it was, had heard it every morning when Treize came in to get me for breakfast, and I discovered that if I pulled through it quickly, the scrape would be indiscernible from the various other noises the house produced. When I stepped out into the hall, I saw a light from beneath the door directly across from mine, flickering light, and the sounds were clearly coming from the same source. It was past midnight. I wondered why his parents let him stay up watching movies, remembering detachedly that my parents wouldn't even let me have a computer in my room because they knew I'd be up all night on it, too.

I stood there in front of his door and stared at it. I swayed, my knees locked because whatever he was watching was churning my blood through my body at breakneck speed, and I knew that holding still was the only way to keep my head from exploding due to the pressure. The one part of me that moved was my hand as I reached out and put it on the round knob in front of me. I held the cold brass, got a feel for it, moved it incrementally to the right and left to see where it caught. I don't know why I turned it, why I thought that cracking open Treize's door was the right thing to do just then. I wasn't sure how I felt about him then, whether or not I considered him my friend anymore. The concept of friendship seemed superfluous in the face of what I'd seen two weeks prior, just as pointless as eating, bathing, sleeping, and crying. These things all seemed to have little use, because what were they outside the framework of the love and security I'd based my entire life upon? I had nothing to lose by opening that door, by spying on him, by looking into his world for a few minutes.

There were no scrapes in Treize's door. I was able to turn the knob and push it open wide enough to see inside without offering any indication of my doing so. He sat at his desk in front of his computer, his semi-profile perfectly in my line of sight. The room was dark except for the brightness emitting from his monitor, bathing him and the wall behind him in electric techni-white…

And the movie he was watching, a war movie, I'd thought, wasn't a movie. It was the news. It was shaky, shoulder-mounted footage from a network-quality camera, shuddering and moving down the long stretch of a street littered with cars that appeared to have been abandoned only after desperately trying to wedge around the gutted, burning carcass of a city bus. There was a sharp jerk as the camera spun around, down a cross-street littered with stones from a wide strip of cobbled road that had been torn up and thrown about by artillery fire. Some of the mess was from the shops lining the street, buildings which had been shelled out, most barely holding their structure. And through the chaotic veil of shaking, I could make out one of the signs: "Sunday Morning." A bakery. I knew because I'd been there once. I'd had an apple tart, one made especially for me by the nonchalantly racist fat lady who owned it, because it was the new year and because she'd always prayed for my father to have a son, and what a handsome son, so much like his father when he was younger, but, oh, she supposed (with a note of disappointment) that he had more of his mother's face, when she got a better look at him, yes, he looks like he's from The North, that boy, untamed and reckless except for his eyes, those Peacecraft eyes that are undeniably Southern in their cold sophistication…

I bit my teeth down hard to keep a small sound of recognition from falling out of my mouth. And then the screen went a furry gray for the briefest of moments before new footage spooled up, similar in quality but so much more terrible. Soldiers in assault uniforms bounded athletically up the stairs leading to the parliament building, a grand structure that was older than most of the city. From the front entrance, different soldiers led sloppily-dressed ministers and cabinet members at gunpoint. These men and women were pushed into a long, straight line that reminded me of a game we used to play at the palace when we got enough people and then forced to kneel. Behind the ministers were soldiers with rifles trained, soldiers who wore yellow-tinted anti-glare glasses and black uniforms, the pitchest of black like the night the stormed and crept through. One soldier walked in front of the line with a vid screen in hand, scrolling through faces, pointing to the ministers that owned them, at which point a crack would ring out and the minister would slump forward onto a pile of his or her own splattered blood and brain matter. Two were executed, one man and one woman, before another soldier saw the camera and bounded to it, sidearm in hand. There was a crush of pistol-butt against bone and the camera reeled and fell to the ground, the recorder still running as one more minister crumpled, the others crying and whimpering, pleading for their lives…

Though I was too stunned to be sickened, Treize wasn't, and his hand rose up to cover his mouth when he saw those people drop, his eyes wide with the same thing I felt. He sat forward in his chair, fully engaged, never once taking his eyes off of that screen. He watched every horrible, nauseating second of it, barely blinking, swallowing heavily now and again, his lips silently moving in what might have been an expression of disbelief. I trembled where I stood, distantly envious of the other boy's relative constitution, and it wasn't long before I couldn't stand to be in that sickly light anymore with those terrible, nightmare images that were immeasurably more terrifying because they were real, because they were of my home. I don't know how I got out of there without making a sound. I was on auto-pilot as I backed away from his door and everything behind it, not snapping out of it until my elbow smacked against the doorframe at the entrance to my room. I didn't sleep that night, even after Treize gave it up at 2:47.

The next day, it was as though nothing had happened. Same time as the day before, he knocked softly, peeked his head in, smiled with a softness that radiated mostly from his eyes, told me that it was time for breakfast and that if I wanted anything special to eat I should tell him, to which I once more shook my head. He didn't look changed, didn't look as though he'd been up most of the night, didn't seem moved or haunted. For the duration of that day I wondered if perhaps I'd dreamed it all.

But it hadn't been a dream. Every night after that, night after night after night I heard the same thing at the same time, crawled out of bed in the same way, crossed the hall, opened Treize's door with the same caution, and watched what he watched. Time slipped by unaccounted for, the only time existing for me the horrible aftermath of the invasion. Every night there was new footage, different footage, all of it Sanc, so much footage that I wondered where it'd come from. Most wasn't as clear as that first night. Many images were taken on cell phones, hand-held camcorders, and thrown onto the nets as quickly as possible before they were discovered, before the reality could be disproven by the victors. I never grew accustomed to it, always closing out our sessions with tight fist, sore eyes, and unsteady legs. Treize no longer covered his mouth but sat curled up, knees hugged to his chest, chin upon them. Sometimes his eyes teared up, sometimes he bit his lip, and sometimes an unexpected loud noise startled him, but he didn't stop.

I remember the exact image that gave me away one night, two weeks after the first time I'd caught him, judging by the moon. It was an image taken by a camcorder, the shot filmed from behind a chunk of rubble not ten meters from where the action was. It showed a girl about Treize's age crying over the body of her father, who'd minutes earlier been sniped down while trying to fight back with a hunting rifle. The man had gotten a shot off on one of the soldiers, an officer, by the sidearm he was carrying, one who must have been popular because his buddies were frothing with blood lust. They grabbed the girl by the back of her coat, dragged her over to the curb, and told her to bite it. Put your fucking jaws around it, one explained, and even at that age she must have known what they were going to do, because she shook her head and started screaming for her dead father, for anybody to help her. She flailed until one of them dug his knee into her back and made her bite it while the other one planted his boot sharply against the back of her head. The camcorder shook and whoever was holding it began sobbing. Treize flinched and pressed his face into his knees, the only time I'd ever seen him look away.

I didn't realize that I was making noise until his head rose sharply and whipped around. In a lightning-fast stream of movements, he unfolded, sprang to his feet, glared in my direction, and, with a quick swipe of his hand, turned his computer off. Only in the black of his room on that lightless, new moon night did I realize that it had been one whole month since my parents had died. I couldn't see anything, and the only sound I heard was loud, asthmatic gasping that seemed to be coming from me.

"Milliardo?" he whispered.

They told me I had to pick a new name. What the kind of request is that, I thought, for what name could I possibly have other than the one my father had given me?

I clutched my hands to my chest as if I could stop my lungs by force. The lightheadedness I felt dissipated when Treize turned on a small, soft-bulb lamp next to his bed. He moved quickly to the doorway where I was standing and coaxed me to come in with a hand on my arm. He shut the door behind me and walked back to the other side of the room, his back to me, hands on his hips. A rough, shivering sigh escaped him.

"How long were you there?"

I'd calmed myself enough to speak, to tell him that I'd been there long enough to see the most horrible thing I'd ever witnessed except for when some eighteen-year-old boy in uniform put a bullet in my mother's head, but I was out of words, completely out of energy and will.

When I didn't say anything, he turned around, the look on his face one of sorrow, shame, and uncomprehending dismay. He crossed the room with those long, sure steps that I'd once struggled to keep pace with and took me by the shoulders.

"Look at me."

I raised my head and saw in his eyes an intensity that I'd never seen before and would never see again, fire-lancing, staggering intensity that was greater than lust, hate, and love, intensity beyond what any grown man could muster, the intensity of a boy who knew he could do anything in the world, even stop the unstoppable.

"I swear to the mother of God, to everything – " He clenched his teeth together and his brow furrowed deeply as he dug his fingers into me to the point of pain. "I swear to you, I will never let anything like this happen again. I swear it to you." He pulled me to him and hugged me tightly, fiercely, and I was limp, hands useless at my sides, face pressed into his chest.

"No matter what the cost," he breathed.

He was only eleven, but I believed him.

xoxoxoxoxoxox

From that pivotal day forward, Treize buried himself in preparation for the academy, for the career that he thought would allow him to mould society into a shape less miserable. Propelled by the awfulness he'd witnessed and by the image he had of his father, who seemed to Treize to have the power to bend gravity to his liking, he spent hours a day studying, riding, helping the stable hands, running, and doing calisthenics routines that seemed insane in their vigor and creativity. His parents were unaware of his motives, thinking his decision to enter the military was motivated by tradition and his interest in science. They didn't realize that he planned on forcing the world into the greatest paradigm shift of the era. To join him later would seem only natural to me, for who could turn their back on intentions so pure, and who could resist taking the journey with a person so fundamentally good? That I would avenge my parents and country was an afterthought; Treize and his vision were the real reasons I became a soldier.

His liquid blue eyes scanned over his text book, absorbing reflected photons and sending electrical impulses into that magnificently receptive brain of his. He had enviable information retention abilities; some would later speculate that he had a photographic memory. Treize's real talent was that he was always carefully attuned on the world around him, his perception and concentration crystal-clear and imperturbable. It was what made him an excellent pilot, student, and a man to never underestimate, for he did not forgot the deeds and words of those around him.

"Did you need something?" Treize asked, not even looking up from his book.

I kept a frown at bay by reminding myself that our cake would surely blow his mind and turn him back into the person I once knew.

"Yes. I have something for you," I said in Russian.

Only then did he lower his book and look me over, discretely looking for the "something" I supposedly had for him. "Do you? And what might that be?" he replied in Standard. One of his reddish eyebrows cocked upward, the only indication of interest he would give me.

"It's a surprise."

He stared at me for a handful of seconds before bookmarking his place and rising nimbly from his chair. He was taller then, and the young-adult contours of his body had begun to fill in from all the work he'd been doing. A broadening of the shoulder. A sharpening of the jaw and hollowing of the cheek. The growth of firm, lean muscle on his arms that ever-so-slightly pushed up the larger veins under his skin. These differences were small in one sense, for Treize would always be trim, but the contrast with the Treize's I'd first met the year before was shocking to me.

He closed his eyes, held out his hand, and I took it tentatively after considering it with some confusion, because I hadn't expected him to do such a thing. I led him to the nook and guided him to sit at one of the two settings Lara had prepared.

I stepped back and tried to calm the tingle of excitement that was stirring in my belly. I was certain, absolutely and beyond all reservation, that he would love it. And how could he not? It was his favorite cake – Lara would know – prepared by two people whose sole purpose for baking it was to make him happy. He was so very often a polite boy, a kind boy, even a sweet boy on the occasion that he forgot himself. Yes, I had no doubt in my mind that the cake would alter his entire worldview, make him forget about his braces, and maybe even oblige him to put a hand on my shoulder and smile his new plastic-coated smile that didn't seem at all unattractive to me.

"Open them."

Treize did as I asked and stared blankly at the cake as though I'd presented him with a ham sandwich on that floppy, post-apocalyptic, hyper-enriched, glaringly white, spongy mush that passes for bread in some countries. I think he would have been more interested if I'd set up his physics book to the section on wave dynamics. At least then he might have uttered a word of gratitude.

"A cake."

"It's Black Forest cake," I clarified. I chewed on my bottom lip and vehemently hoped that he was joking with me. "Lara and I made it for you."

There was a dreadfully long pause, and then the reply I'd never conceived in the various scenarios I'd run through back in the kitchen: "I'm not really hungry."

All at once, the fledgling happiness and anticipation I'd felt dried up into a lifeless, gritty powder, the stuff I imagined was left behind after a cremation. I wondered how that could possibly be his answer, after all the time we'd spent together, after all the facets I'd seen of him… how could he say something that countered all the information I'd collected over the last year - not only countered it, but brazenly defied it?

I then felt another kind of tingling, one that rose from my fingertips settled in my jaw.

Did he have any idea how lucky he was? Any idea? For all the sympathy he so obviously had for me, did he possess the faculties to reflect back on his life and realize just how extraordinarily fortunate he was? He had two parents who were alive and who loved him, even if his father was absent and his mother was at times cold and unfeeling. He had an old, proud home filled with people who would literally do anything for him, so deep was their fondness. Like Lara, who had stolen over two hours away from her real job - which was not showing idiot seven-year-olds how to bake cake - only because she adored Treize. She loved him so much that thirteen years later she would name her first son after him. That was the kind of life Treize had, the kind I'd once had before it'd been ripped from my small, frantically clutching hands.

It was the first time I'd ever wanted to hurt somebody. I wanted to grab him by the shirt collar and shake the sulky aloofness out of him. I wanted to yell at him, tell him to stop being a brat, to stop spitting in my face by taking all the wonderful things he had for granted...

But I didn't. Instead, I reached over and grabbed a fistful of cake. Slowly, thoughtfully, like an artist working thick paint across a canvas, I smeared the dessert across his face, moving diagonally from one corner of his chin, over his nose, up his forehead and into his hair.

I dropped my hand and took a moment to admire my work. The look on Treize's face was one of absolute indignation, mouth agape, one eye sealed shut with chocolate frosting, the other wide and with dilated pupil. His bangs stood at an odd angle, molded by a fluffy layer of whipped cream dotted with speckles of moist cake. An errant cherry dropped from his brow and onto his lap.

I stared at him, still angry but growing less so with every passing second. When his tongue darted out of his mouth to lick the icing from his upper lip, I burst into tiny childish giggles. It was such a foreign sound to my ears, and Treize smiled when he heard it. He used his left hand like a trowel to dig the frosting out of his eye socket and smeared what he'd gathered across my smirking mouth.

"Good cake, Milliardo."

I licked my lips. It really was excellent.

I eyed my suit over the top of a copy of Nabokov's Russian translation of "Lolita." I'd hooked the hanger over the short neck of a light fixture that gave the sitting room of my rental a warm glow, leaving it in plain sight for me to ponder, distracting me from the trials of Humbert Humbert. I laid the open book face-down across my chest, the spine protesting with a crackle, and wondered what exactly I was going to do with myself.

The fitting had gone well. If Madame Boucher recognized me, she didn't show it, and she certainly didn't seem to be in the throes of degenerative brain disease. She'd commented that I had the longest legs she'd ever measured, marked a few spots in the trousers and sleeves with short ticks of white tailor's chalk, told me to strip out, and spent about five minutes on the sewing machine. The result was as well-crafted as any from the mustachioed tailors in Russia who fussed and bustled about for hours - oh, the hours of my life wasted while being fitted for tuxedos and other formal party wear, an overly-complicated process that always made me feel as though I were some lopsided giant for whom special arrangements had to be made instead of a well-proportioned young man of normal dimensions. Jesus. One would think they'd been paid by the hour.

So, I had a suit. It struck me then that I didn't have a plan for it, its purchase having been the result of impulse, something that seemed correct at the time. I figured that I would wear it when I went to Brussels to approach Anne for a job, which I had roughly planned out for later that month, maybe after Christmas, when I assumed things would be quiet. There would be some event, a ceremony of remembrance that I intended to ignore completely. Whatever the new president had to say wouldn't mean anything to me. I'd read his biography. He'd never served in the military and never even been in public office. He'd been the CEO of a tech company in South Africa, somebody unsullied by the Old Guard ways, a fresh face with forward-thinking ideas that would catapult the ESUN into a new future of networking and space exploration. New colonies! On Mars! Great idea, except for all the dilapidated pieces of shit already orbiting around Earth, colonies on their knees shaking their tin cans and practically begging for money that never came.

Out with the old, in with the new - wasn't that what Vadimas had said? But I was still stuck in the old, which had me sucked in to the knees, and for all the struggling I pretended to do, I mostly just wanted to be completely devoured by it so that I wouldn't feel like I had a choice in the matter. That suit was my choice, and perhaps some smarter part of me had bought it and hung it there so that I wouldn't forget which decision was the correct one. If Treize could have seen me then, seen what I'd been, seen what I'd become, he would have been disappointed. More than disappointed.

My God, what I wouldn't have given to hear just how disappointed he was, to see him standing across the room next to my suit, bitching about wasting my life like a recluse, to see the false anger that hid his concern and, even further behind that, a profound longing for my happiness. "Look at what we've created," he would say, "and for what, so that you could bar yourself from it?" And then he might cross the space between us and stand beside where I was lying, look down at me, and frown. And I suppose then I'd reach up and grab onto his hand, which he'd probably let me hold for a couple of seconds before pulling it away and taking a seat on the opposite end of the couch. And I guess he'd let me rest my feet on his lap, and then he'd finger the hem of my jeans and explain what it all meant, every intention he ever had, what regrets he died with, what he hoped for the future, for me, and he might say that he wanted me to move on, find something I truly loved to do, find somebody who would give me what he couldn't. And at that point I'd probably clench my jaw and ask him how he could do this to me, how he could expect me to move on like he'd been nothing but a bridge to the future, a horrible future built on the end of his life, a future where the finality of his death was the only thing guaranteed, the rest of it a black tunnel that we were expected to hold hands and march through with our heads held high in triumph over our basic natures...

I did clench my jaw then and ask those things to an empty room, and I felt so sad when there was no Treize there to respond. It was the most basic sad, a flat, lightly-choking constant that made me want to be dead because maybe then I might feel a bit better. The world didn't need everlasting bastards like me and Heero Yuy anyway. It needed brave, dynamic people with high ideals and the will and strength to lead us to them. People like Treize, people whose deaths we can always weep over because they are so romantically tragic, blindingly brilliant people who dazzle us until there's nothing left in them for fuel, who collapse and explode like a dying star, throwing out waves and waves and waves of themselves that stretch on forever and ever, across the entire universe.

When I heard myself begin to sniffle like a child, I growled and threw my book across the room, because I had to do something, anything, right that moment - anything except cry. Time to be done with that shit, I told myself. Time to get a grip. I was a twenty-year-old man with a suit, God damn it. Time to get a life.

I stared blankly at the splayed, bent pages of "Lolita"… Lo in the morning, Lola in slacks, Dolly at school, Dolores on the dotted line, but always… In the arms of Humbert Humbert, she was always Lolita…

See, Relena? I thought. You're not the only one who can grow up.

Note: If you've never read Vladimir Nabokov's "Lolita," you absolutely must.


	10. Sweet

Title: Limbo

Chapter: 10/12: Sweet

Pairing: Past Treize/Zechs (made present-tense via flashbacks)

Spoliers: Series, EW, Episode Zero

Warnings: Death themes, male/male sexual situations in this chapter, foul language, grief, angst, cynicism, debatable instances of sap. Flashbacks throughout. Rated M for swears and darkness

Disclaimer: I don't own any part of GW. No monies have been or will be made off of this thing.

Please see Limbo 1 for very important notes!!

This chapter makes reference to my first fic, "Traitor: Breaking Up is Hard to Do." Reading this isn't crucial to understanding this chapter, but you might see some connections if you have (you can find it on this site). I know I've always put the general warning about sex, but there's actually some in this chapter, so, yep. Oh, and there's some adventurous prose here, too. Do not be frightened.

Many heartfelt thanks to LH for being tremendously helpful and so very lovely. Also, thank you to everybody who has added me to their "Favorites" lists. And, of course, thanks to everyone who's kept with the story so far. I hope you continue to enjoy.

Legend:

xxxx: separates main story from flashbacks

xoxo: separates flashback segments

xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

Are you aware that any old group of revolutionaries can gather for tea and terror and rightly call themselves a "foundation"? How unoriginal. How annoying. It wasn't a surprise, but it was so unbelievably irritating.

I thought back to the Preventer transmission I'd intercepted. It seemed they'd found their missing metal and then some. The Barton Foundation. The name sounded vaguely familiar to me. L3. Big money family, mega-capitalists, practically built Triple-Nine with their bare hands. Trowa Barton the Gundam pilot - I hadn't yet figured out how he fit into the equation, though I knew he had to represent some variable. As I packed my computer into its case, names, figures, and facts churned in my head along with the words of the net anchor who'd broken the story to me. It'd only been twenty minutes since I'd heard, a measure of time that had been marked by a controlled, continuous set of decisions and actions. Call Vadimas. Put on suit. Pack up shit. At the very least, the impending threat had eliminated the need for me to choose a time to return to society.

I huffed and tied my hair back at my neck. I wondered how I'd fought for all those years with it draped over my shoulders. This frustration was nothing more than a factor of the brightly-flickering candle of resentment I held for those colonists. It was bad enough that they seemed bent on unsettling the coltishly-unsteady state of peace, ripping the seams out of what Treize and tens of thousands of people had given their lives to construct. But when they decided to use my sister as the bargaining chip, that really, really pissed me off, maybe more than anything, even despite her tendency to voluntarily gravitate towards peril. I felt intensely big-brotherly in a snarling, bristling sort of way.

I gave my rental one last look over my shoulder, the reality of leaving it bittersweet. It had been the set of my square one, my do-over point. It had been exactly what I'd needed, and growing out of that need felt close to good. I slung my messenger-style bag over my left shoulder. My suit, perfectly tailored, had restriction similar to that of my dress uniform, a bit stiff across the shoulders, urging them into a rigid and intimidating line. I descended the porch steps and walked to the pickup that was waiting for me.

"You look like you mean business!" Vadimas said as I buckled my seatbelt. He'd agreed to drive me to the city, which would take a little over two hours.

I had settled into an eerie calm about what I was doing, the apprehension of earlier that month dissolved by a single drop of genuine purpose. There was a rightness to it, and the gravity of the situation didn't afford any allowance for me to dissect the reasons why I shouldn't have felt that way.

"I bet you're ready to give them hell."

"I'm feeling a bit eager, yes."

It was different from before. I was different. No longer Zechs Merquise, no longer Milliardo Peacecraft, I was in the space between. A consolidation, a compromise. Why couldn't I be both? I was both. I have been both since the necessity for two arose. It was so simple that a child could understand it. Looking back, I wonder how I'd confounded such simplicity into a twisted, tearing, flailing grasp for self-knowledge.

We pulled out of the long driveway that led from his property and onto the road. It had been ten months since I'd been away from the farm. In the rearview mirror, illuminated by the soft light of dusk, it looked wilted and used-up. In the months ahead it would rain, and the crops would flourish once again in the spring. Winter was a dead time. Christmas was a dead time.

"Mankind will always fight," Treize had said, his unerring credo, even as he strove with every breath towards an end to it.

But fighting has never been the root of the problem. Fighting is a symptom of the disease of imbalance. Fighting is what happens when Maslow's Hierarchy goes unattended, a psychological, Darwinian inescapability. It's also what happens when politicians and other magnetic personalities poison a contented public with impassioned, podium-gripping lectures about how discontent we really are and then turn us over to a few greedy individuals who've decided that the power they already have is not enough. Profiteers of disorder. The Federation. The Foundation. OZ.

Were the colonies a mistake? No. It was the neglect. Nothing thrives under neglect, and when something fails to thrive but refuses to die, the likely result is unrest. There's nothing particularly profound about this, but it's a different lens through which to view Treize's actions. Was he really such an idealist? Was it really a fool's quest to seek to correct an imbalance? I think sometimes I underestimate his pragmatism, as absurd as that might sound. But then, I can't decide most days how I feel about him beyond the invariable certainty that I miss him terribly. As for us, We are one imbalance that is fatally uncorrectable.

I feel anger sometimes. The anger of abandonment. The anger of loneliness. I act out on it, make others nervous. Like repeatedly smashing against the same immovable rock, I rage until I'm too tired to try anymore and recede back into a state of mild dissatisfaction with everything…

But I get ahead of myself.

I remembered something as we crossed the Belgian border, something about the day I was sentenced, the day seventy mobile suits failed to destroy me and Tallgeese. What a turbulent, ballistic chain of events, that inevitable punishment for predestined betrayal, a swan song of rapturous violence. I was both out of my mind and deeply settled in my senses, mournful and triumphant. I'd lost it towards the end, the product of no sleep and post-combative breakdown, had descended into hallucination and total collapse. But there was a thought I'd had, my last waking thought before passing out. A memory. Treize in the stable, kicked by that horrible horse. He'd said he was fine, and I'd believed him. I'd known it in my heart.

But, in reality, he hadn't been fine at all. How was it that I'd completely misremembered something so significant? I have a theory. Perhaps it was what I'd needed to believe then, on the eve of my desertion of OZ, my career, everything I'd worked for. Treize. I suppose it had been easier to move forward after having convinced myself that everything was in its right place, that Treize was and always would be fine. What incredible, fallacious things we have to tell ourselves just to get through this life.

Was there a best time? Yes. Absolutely. That same memory, the real one, was part of it. And in the truck, that's what came to mind before anything else, even with the chaos that loomed, even when facing the threat of a war that we couldn't win. Less charged than our two-week break from R&D. Easier than the dark shadow over India. This time beat out every vacation, every duty day with a few exceptions reserved for those priceless moments of secret affirmation, small escapes always laced with fear. It had started with pain and ended with confession, the sweetness only matched by the heartbreaking rareness of it. I wondered then how such a wonderful memory could be so painful, even though I knew the answer was as simple as the fact that I would never see Treize again.

xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

It was one of the most awful successions of sounds I've ever heard. A startled gasp. A dull thud. A grassy skid. I knew what it was even before I reached the stable. I'd half-jokingly warned him about it. That horse, I'd said, was ruined. Untrainable. Unbreakable. Treize had then offered to rename it after me - not, he clarified, because I was ruined, but rather because the horse and I shared a certain "freeness of spirit." I'd still been slightly offended.

I'd spent the morning with him at the stable, lying on a stack of baled hay with a tech journal that couldn't hold my attention for more than a few minutes at a time. Treize had been in a talkative mood since awakening, excited about the latest textile engineering research out of Seoul National University, material that had promising implications for body armor. I'd listened attentively, interjected where I could, but mostly I'd watched him edge cautiously around the mean, skittish horse he'd decided to name Kolya, an inappropriately diminutive name for such a bastard of an animal.

While Treize was at Kolya's side, testing his foot lightly in the stirrup, he mentioned that was feeling sweet ("Not feeling sweet. Feeling _like_ a sweet."), so I went back to the house to fetch the rest of a half-eaten bar of chocolate that Dorothy had sent him from their vacation home in Switzerland. She'd handwritten his name on the package, her script multitudes neater than his ever was, curly and smooth. He'd plucked it from the mailbox with a smile that brimmed with sunny affection, held it up to me, said that this was the good stuff. I'm not sure if he was talking about the chocolate or the receipt of a gift from the girl. She always was his favorite cousin and one of the few people in the world he sincerely enjoyed interacting with. As for Dorothy, she was fairly certain that Treize helped her father program the rise and fall of the sun, the orbit of the moon, and the movements of the constellations.

I was walking back from the house when I heard it, and I picked up my pace, entering the stable just in time to see Treize bounce energetically to his feet. I stood in the stable's doorway, frowning.

"Are you okay?"

He brushed the clumps and bits of hay off of himself and walked over to me, grinning. The ass and right leg of his riding pants were filthy from being kicked halfway across the stable, a distance that I am not at all exaggerating. He wrapped his arms around me and rubbed his knee against the inside of my pant leg to make sure he got it dirty.

"I'm fine. How are you?" He kissed me without awaiting my reply.

He smelled like horse, and I told him so between warm, easy kisses. But it wasn't more than a handful of moments before he went strangely stiff, his enthusiasm drained. He pulled back, his face white, and then he pushed me away as he took staggering steps to get outside. When I pursued, I saw him bent at the waist like he was going to be sick, but instead he started to lean to the left, leaning and leaning until he collapsed against the wall of the stable. I stood there for a few shocked seconds, long seconds, seeing but not entirely comprehending his struggle to stay on his feet, even propped up against the building. I broke sharply out of my paralysis and swiftly closed the small gap between us to help him.

"I knew you weren't fine," I gritted out, electrified and hyper-focused by fear. I hooked his right arm around my shoulder and reached around to grab his waist for support. "This isn't 'fine,' Treize!"

He laughed, a hard, nervous laugh that went on far longer than it should have. His head lolled forward, hair falling over his face, and when I pulled him away from the wall, he could barely support any of his own weight. He was breathing shallowly, quickly, laughing as he hyperventilated, clutching at his right side with his free hand. As I dragged him up the path leading to the house, my training possessed me completely, making me steady, calm, leaving no room for panic, no room even for personal concern. Treize became part of a mission objective. Move casualty to safety for assessment. "Safety," I decided, would be the jeep. I was going to throw him in the back seat and, as for assessment, I figured I could do that while I sped like a hell-demon to the nearest hospital.

The jeep was parked out front, thank God, but as we approached, Treize balked. Of course.

"What...are you doing?"

I opened the rear passenger door. "Sit."

He shook his head faintly and tried to pull away from me. "I'm fine, I said...I just need...to lie down."

There's a certain look on a person's face when they're seriously injured, and it's not something that can be masked by discipline or good humor. It's in the eyes, an immaculate self-awareness, a tense acknowledgment of mortality, a dismissal of everything in the world except the body's immediate state of disrepair. Sometimes one can find no greater clarity than in the eyes of a man who is dying. I've seen it. Treize had seen it. And while Treize wasn't dying, not then, I knew - because he knew - that this wasn't something to casually sleep off.

"You can lie down in the back."

"Let go..."

"No."

He was unsteady enough that I was able to get him off balance and force him to sit back against the seat. He grabbed at me for support or to fight back, I'm not sure, so I took a rough pulse while he had a grip on my bicep. His skin was cold, his heart rate frantic. It only took a press on the shoulder, a pathetically small effort, to get him to lie on his back. I took his legs, folded them in, and pushed him further into the vehicle. He didn't argue anymore. I propped up his knees, slammed the door, and ran to the driver's side.

I sat, cursed under my breath, pulled the chocolate out of my back pocket, and threw it on the floor on the passenger side. I thought a word of thanks to the habits of the household, which dictated that the keys be left in the car no matter what, unintimidated by the prospect of theft, ultimately efficient because there was never a question of the keys' location. It wasn't a city jeep favored by young girls and men in mid-life crises. It was the tough-as-nails breed of beast that had helped win World War II, a true all-terrain vehicle that made a child's endeavor of rutted, washed out, potholed, dirt and gravel roads. I tore down the forest-flanked path, knowing every curve, every obstacle, every snag in the transmission. I yanked the rearview mirror down so I could see Treize, who was lying so still, the only movement of his body caused by the dips and jolts of the suspension.

"Treize?"

There was a long pause. Then, "...Hm?"

Up ahead, an impossible deer ventured out in the road. I laid on the horn and yelled for it to get the fuck out of the way, which it did. I kept my eyes glued to the road then, on the lookout for any more animals that had a death wish.

"Are you all right?" Of course, this was the question with the most obvious answer, but I wanted to hear something from him. Anything. Anything but a lackadaisical 'Hm?'

"...No." There was another pause, a small sound of movement, then, "Ah, God..."

I looked back into the rearview and saw Treize, his grey t-shirt lifted, hands trembling, eyes glassy and fixed on his right side, which was bruised purple-red, a large, nasty blotch that stretched down his torso, over his lower ribs, down his stomach. Blood bleeding beneath his skin. Panic finally set in. My panic, not his, for he seemed to lose interest after a few moments, letting his head and arms fall limply back to where they might.

The nearest town had a small but adequate hospital, and when we blew past the last of the trees and out of the forest, I could see the building clearly from the road. My hands tightened on steering wheel, and my foot pushed even further down towards the floor when we hit proper pavement, picking up serious speed that did not relent until we hit the residential area where the hospital was located. Treize grunted softly when I flew over a speed bump and up the ramp to the emergency entrance, where I jumped out, ran in, and barked demands at people until they followed me out with a gurney.

There was a rush of movement, a flourish of overlapping Russian, an inquiry, to me: What happened? Horse kick. When did the injury occur? I looked at my watch. Thirty minutes ago. Did you give him anything? No. They knew who he was, a local celebrity of sorts, a hero, their native son, and made an extra show of speed and competence because of it. He lay there, eyes trailing lazily over the faces of those around him, meeting mine, a small smile, he lifted his hand, reached weakly - or was he waving? I couldn't get close enough, and then they took him into an exam area and made me wait outside.

I proceeded mechanically to do responsible things. I called the house and told them what had happened. I told the records clerk to scan all forthcoming documentation to a confidential inbox at Federation Medical Command. From my phone, I remotely logged onto MIL-DB and contacted Treize's unit to tell them that they should expect further orders from Med Com. I dared a quick email to General Catalonia. I didn't yet know the extent of his injuries, but I knew he wouldn't be going back to his unit in two days, the official end of his leave. And then, when I'd done all that I could reasonably do, I meandered to the waiting room and sat.

The room was grey. The lightest tint of grey, something that came from the shade of the eco-friendly bulbs, something enhanced by the paint on the walls, which wasn't white, wasn't brown, but was like the water you dip your fingers in when modeling with clay. The chairs were plastic buckets of the most ergonomically displeasing form. An old woman eyed me warily, looking offended. Perhaps because I was crashing from an adrenaline high with drooping eyelid. Perhaps because my shirt was smeared with dried horse shit from when I was shoving Treize in the jeep.

"What?" I asked in Russian, sick of her already.

She didn't say anything, but lowered her head and grumbled aphonically as she fumbled with a pair of knitting needles.

It was quiet. Nobody was moaning in pain. No blaring Code Blue alerts sounded. Doctors, nurses, attendants, and clerks spoke with hushed voices as though we were in a library. I thought through various points proceeding the accident. The trademark easy dismissal. The sickly drain. The uneasy giddiness. The lolling. The perfunctory resistance. The unsettling quiet.

I was the one with the ten-centimeter-thick medical file. I was the one who was in and out of hospitals on a rolling cycle. I was the one who got crushed, thrown, and hit. I'd been bandaged, splinted, stitched, scanned, medicated, and cut into more times than I could remember. I had scars of all shapes and textures. The worst were the burns, the ugliest, the asymmetrical, lumpy rises and troughs, their origin unmistakable even with the most skillfully laid grafts. The cleanest were the stitched splits, the shards from exploding consoles, deep cuts that made nice, straight lines. Surgical interventions were the same, tidy, as attractive as a scar can get. Treize was always the one in the waiting room, when we were lucky enough to be assigned together, though most of the time he had to hear about it from halfway across the planet, which bothered him so much, I knew. He'd been smacked about his fair share in combat, had the gruesome scar smeared across his right thigh and another down the side. His scars were scars of bravery; mine, more often than not, were scars of insanity, earned by doing things few in their right minds would do, flying the unflyable, fighting the undefeatable. It should have been him in the waiting room. How could he ever stand it? The stink of sanitation - why did it have to smell like that? Why couldn't it smell like the clean room at R&D...?

My phone buzzed. New orders. ATTN: Zechs Merquise, Captain, UESASC: Soldier is assigned temporary duty at Corsica Base, OZ Research and Development; telecommute authorized; duration not to exceed one month without additional approval. ATTN: Treize Khushrenada, Major, UESASC: Soldier is assigned convalescent leave not to exceed four months without further medical evaluation and authorization. Signed: Ming Wu, Lieutenant Colonel, United Earth Sphere Alliance Specials Corps.

That was fast.

I stood, suddenly extremely impatient, and walked to the reception desk to ask about Treize. "Hold on," the receptionist said, "I'll check."

She checked. A nurse followed her out, glanced around the waiting room, unsure of who he was looking for. The receptionist pointed and retreated to her desk. The nurse, a young, smiling Buryat with blue scrubs, ran his slim fingers through a small stack of paperwork as he gave me the rundown:

Blunt trauma, three broken ribs, CT scan confirmed can't translate in right kidney, hence the can't translate, drained nearly a liter of blood, currently undergoing endoscopic (?) surgery to repair damaged organ, minimally invasive, expect full recovery, what is your relationship to the patient? his friend? will require a solid week of bed rest with gradual increase in activity, he's a soldier, correct? no duty for a month, at the very least, will be prescribed oral analgesic for pain and discomfort, here's the prescription, the pharmacy is on the first floor, we've had great success with this drug, will somebody be available to help him out? you? here's a set of instructions for wound care, will be ready for release tomorrow, will be out of surgery in an hour or so, then you can visit with him, you'll want to bring him some clean clothes because we had to cut him out of what he was wearing, I do have his boots, though, (nervous chuckle), I haven't seen an injury quite like that from a horse, must be a terrible beast, I can't believe how much he bled, oh (!), but you don't want to hear about that, I'm sure, he'll be just fine, you know, just fine.

I think I said my thanks before he walked away. I was relieved, horrified, and exhausted.

xoxoxoxoxo

After I brought him home, Treize spent the first two days in a deep sleep. I kept him full of some new designer drug, nothing like its crude opiate ancestors, something precisely calibrated to make the brain crank out a poetic balance of serotonin and endorphins. The fact sheet read like a technical manual describing how each small modification in dosage could engineer a different state of consciousness and relief. When I woke him intermittently to feed him, make him drink water, give him his meds, he looked terrible, said he felt terrible, was miserable, humiliated when I had to help him sit up, walk to the bathroom, lie back down. Even on the full dose, he was in severe pain with virtually every move he made, even breathing, courtesy of the broken ribs, a smashed kidney, and deeply bruised muscles.

I didn't sleep in his bed like I usually did when we were home together, afraid that I might throw my arm around him accidentally, habitually. I used my room with both of our doors wide open in case he needed anything. Lara came up the first day and wept for him, which I listened to, lock-jawed, from the hallway. Her tears made me feel as though maybe I should have been more upset about his condition, even though I knew there was no need for it. I assured her that he would be fine, and when she asked me if he was hurting, I lied. The groundskeeper cut some beautiful, perfectly open roses and brought them up in a vase, appearing moved upon seeing the master of the house in his semi-conscious state with his oily hair, frown-set face, and immobility. He asked me to tell Treize that he was praying for him, and I mentioned then that he was going to recover fully, to which the groundskeeper replied that it never hurt to pray for the ones you love.

When I tried to give him his pills on day three, he told me that he didn't want to take all of them. He grabbed the fact sheet off the nightstand, blinked blearily at it for a minute, and stabbed his finger at the indications for one pill. He told me he refused to spend his entire leave asleep, I told him that he would be in considerable discomfort on such a low dose. He retorted that he'd rather be in pain than be a bloody vegetable. We leisurely bickered over it for a few minutes, and I agreed to give him a reduced dosage only if he promised not to try to do anything. I meant anything. If he even attempted to get out of bed by himself, I was going to drug him behind his back, I swore it. He asked me why I wasn't back in Xi'an. I told him that I was on TDY, ostensibly to help R&D burn through a backlog of unprogrammed simulations and statistical analyses, something I could do from home. He then smiled for the first time since his surgery and said he was looking forward to spending the month with me - and why wasn't I sleeping with him?

It took me a moment to formulate a reply. What a strange thing for him to say. How strangely unreserved. How strangely...sweet.

xoxoxoxoxoxo

"This feels wonderful."

Treize continued to sink lower, lower, until his head fully submerged, and then popped back up, hair sopping, water dripping down his face. He lifted his left arm, grimacing, and pushed back his bangs into a wet semblance of the style he typically wore at work.

It was his first wash since the accident, though not his first attempt. He'd wanted a shower the day before, but when we got into the bathroom and turned on the water, the sound of it slapping forcefully against the wall of the shower had made him nervous. "Screw it," he'd said and walked very stiffly, slowly, stubbornly back to bed, batting away my offer of assistance, leaving me to trail behind him like a mother behind her teetering, obstinate, dirty child.

I sat on the bathroom floor near the tub, one leg drawn up, the other extended across the floor tiles. My foot touched the base of the bath, a claw-footed behemoth, a unit that had been with the house longer than most of the other fixtures. It had taken quite some time to lower himself into it, something so painful that he'd broken out in a sweat from the effort. I'd watched, spotting him, and had felt peculiarly awkward doing so, like I'd been invading his privacy despite the number of times I'd seen him naked in various other non-sexual situations. Seeing him so vulnerable had upset me in a way I couldn't precisely articulate, perhaps because it'd kicked the legs out from under the image I had of him as an impregnable fortress. I'd never seen him torn up like that before. Even after L3, I'd only seen him after he'd recovered significantly. Those scars had been earned and healed alone - or, at least, without my witness. Somebody had been there. Somebody who wasn't me... Not a place I particularly want to go, though.

He rested his head back against the high lip of the bath and closed his eyes. He hadn't been comfortable since he'd been home from the hospital, too much hurt, too much hassle, too much dependence. He'd kept his promise not to adventure about, though it hadn't been much of a promise to keep considering the punishment he incurred from merely turning onto his side. Since I'd lowered his dose, he'd spent most of the time awake or semi-awake, never sleeping soundly. Despite this, he had attempted to be pleasant with great success. In fact, I'm not even sure he'd been trying all that hard.

"What are you thinking about?"

I started out of some haze and glanced up at him. "Nothing."

He rolled his head to the side to look at me. He gazed in silence, a small smile on his lips. I broke eye contact after a couple of seconds, letting my attention drift to a spot on the wall that wouldn't come clean… two towels on the rack, His and His, I thought with a dark spot of humor… what a life we had...

"You were scared, weren't you?"

"Of course I was," I admitted unapologetically.

"I should have let Pavel work on him. You were right. I was stupid to try."

I didn't say anything.

"I'm sorry for scaring you."

I still didn't say anything.

"Thank you for helping me."

"What else would I do?" I replied, eyeing him questioningly from beneath the heavy fringe of my untrimmed bangs. "You're my friend. Of course I'm going to help you."

"What's wrong?"

"You're being so... Forget it." I was torn between wanting to say it and not. I wanted a nap right then, just so I wouldn't have to finish the conversation.

He raised his eyebrows. "What?"

"Nice."

Those same brows fell and drew close. "Am I not nice to you?"

I took pause to choose my words carefully. "We're not very nice people, Treize."

It was true. Of all of the adjectives I could use to describe us, "nice" never made the top ten. Polite enough, good-natured, hopeful, perhaps. Nice, not so much.

He considered this statement seriously, his face adopting an unusually transparent expression of disappointment. "No, I suppose we're not. Why is that?"

"I'm not sure. I've never been particularly nice. You used to be. Until you joined up."

"There's not much room for nice in the military." His eyes moved from side-to-side rapidly, incrementally, indicating a certain high energy of thought. "But we should at least be nice to each other, don't you think?"

"We're not mean to each other."

"No, not usually, but sometimes we're very mean, wouldn't you say?"

In the ensuing quiet, I heard the water slosh lightly about, and I imagined him running his hand along, trying with limited success to get as close as he could to the surface without skimming it. Something like that. Something pointless. Doing something just to do it just because why not.

He continued. "And when I make you uncomfortable simply because I'm flying a bit on whatever they gave me - "

"You're not making me uncomfortable."

In fact, though I hated myself for thinking it, I liked Treize better under mild chemical influence. It made him an adult echo of the boy he once was, before the world became too serious, the mission too pressing, too demanding, too strangling, before it cut us off from our hearts, leaving them to harden and shrivel from lack of use while we turned the cogs of history with only our minds, plans, and egos to guide us.

"I'm not loopy."

"No, you're not." Not loopy. Uninhibited. "You seem content."

"Would it be ironic if I agreed with you?"

One side of my mouth quirked up. "A bit."

"Oh, well. Could you reach the shampoo for me?"

xoxoxoxoxoxo

I was dreaming.

An endlessly long line of us in our physical training uniforms, black t-shirt with olive-green shorts that are just a little too short. The shirts are snug; there's no room for a belly. Not in the Specials. Treize always looked great in PT gear. Especially the shorts. But he's not in my dream. The line of us, the endlessly long line of us, moves through a maze of stations. Poke one. Poke two. Poke three - that one burns. Poke four. Poke five. Poke six. Poke. Poke. Poke…

"Quit it," I grouched into my pillow. I was on my stomach on the side of the bed I wasn't used to sleeping on, the side furthest from Treize's wound, the one closest to the window and the farthest from the door. When I cracked open one eye, I saw that it was still very early, the sun not even up, the sky dull outside the window. He poked me in the arm again and I turned my head to look at him through a thin wall of not-yet-awake fog.

"What?"

He was chewing his lower lip, considering me with something distantly resembling apprehension. My first fuzzy thought was that something had happened, that he'd discovered he was pissing blood or some other ill-boding side-effect that the hospital had told him to be on alert for.

"What's wrong?" I sat up on my forearms and passed my hand along my face to brush aside sleep-messed hair.

"Will you sit on me?" he asked, voice thick, gritty.

I squinted as though it would help me better comprehend what he'd just said. "What?"

He took my hand and slid it beneath the duvet, right over his straining groin. My eyes went wide and my chest seized. The universe and everything in it compacted into a single point. It was always that way when I was with Treize, my terminal velocity, unrivaled, dizzyingly intense. Better than any jump. Better than any fight.

"Are you sure?" I couldn't keep the undercurrent of knotted excitement out of my voice, something that blew the cobwebs clean from my consciousness, making me alert, piqued. Even as I thought about his injury, the potential for his discomfort, how I should have been more mature and reserved, I squeezed him, stroked him a few times.

He pressed himself into my hand with a sharp intake of breath. "Please..."

There was hasty preparation, just enough, no more, and when I did as he asked, what he pulled me out of sleep to do, I remember thinking with fleeting coherence that I couldn't think of a better way to start the day. It was a different perspective, a different balance, one that shifted the weight of control in my favor. I never particularly enjoyed measuring our dynamics in such unfeeling terms, but control and power were the unfortunate currencies we often traded with.

I was eighteen then, generally insatiable and perpetually functioning on a full charge of unspent energy. I flourished in the bombardment of pleasure, the raw, grunting physicality, the gut-clawing, unrelenting, positive feedback loop of desire for Treize Khushrenada, the one person who by some freak cosmic accident appeared to feel the same for me. I settled into an enthusiastic rhythm and looked down on him with a self-serving voyeur's delight. Across his torso stretched the blotched mess of red, purple, green, and yellow, mottled tendrils that stretched wide like a water stain that gets under the carpet and seems to only grow larger and darker with time. It was the worst then, ugly, painfully tender. His broken ribs had to have been hurting him, but instead of exercising care, urging me to slow down, even telling me to stop altogether, he only let himself get dragged further into what we were doing. Every sharp, panted breath seemed to make his touch needier. Down my flanks, over my thighs, settling on my ass with a firm grip, squeezing, holding as his hips began to move, compounding everything. I let my head fall forward with a rough sigh, no longer able to rest in my modicum of imitation-Treize coolness, which was never me, anyway.

One hand moving back up, grasping onto my shoulder, sliding down my arm. He took my hand again, guided it to my middle, settled there. Sure, why not? I touched myself like he wanted me to, noting with no small surge of arousal the expression on his face as he watched, cheeks, neck, and chest flushed, gaze heavy-lidded, fixated on my hand and what it was doing, flitting up my face whenever I vocalized in the ineloquent lexicon of sex just how outrageously good I felt. He bit his lip again, harder this time, as if to bite back a sound that might threaten his usual restraint, and his left hand shot up and grabbed the artfully-twisted wrought iron of the bed frame. The muscles of his arm and chest flexed, holding on for life, holding back...

"This…" he breathed, seemingly to himself, his other hand tightening around my ass, "like this… this is it..."

He thrust up sharply, and I couldn't stop from crying out.

He groaned loudly, suddenly completely unconcerned with himself, and his eyes rolled back. "Yes… exactly like this…"

The small medallion around his neck slid little by little down its chain with every rock of our bodies, and I spared a lust-flustered moment to entertain how the Holy Mother of God might feel about what we were doing in her presence. I might have laughed if I hadn't been on the verge of losing it. Between him and my own hand, the tight, quivering mass in the pit of my stomach compacted, driving me urgently to push and stroke just a little harder, almost, almost, and it was Treize tensing, shoving himself up as deep as he could, moaning and clutching as he came, that made that dense mass expand explosively, sending me over… To fall, fall… It was the best kind of rush, the elation, the incomparable euphoria, cushioned by a different kind of intimacy that gathered around us like a cocoon.

He let go of the bed frame, and his shaking fingers drifted overhead to the nightstand, where he grabbed a tissue and gave it to me to clean off my hand. I got off of him then but stayed close, on my side, firm against the warmth of his body, which, even with the gruesomeness of the wound, was still absolutely amazing to me - even more so for what it did to me, what it made me feel, how much it made me want, over and over. It was never enough.

"Good morning," he drawled, his breathing slowly returning to a deeper, steadier rate. Only then did he indicate the pain that must have been there the whole time, which manifested in the slightest of hitches upon full inhalation.

I touched my lips to his damp temple. He tasted salty, unwashed, fantastic. "Yes, why is that?"

"Ah, well," he paused to clear his throat, "I was awake at, I believe it was three. Wide awake, for some reason."

I lifted my head so that he could slide his arm around me. His fingers delved into my hair.

"And I was thinking about when all of this mess started. How I let my attention slip, didn't stay close enough to the horse. That was the problem, you know."

I touched my fingers very lightly to the patch of purple-black right below his ribcage. I'm not sure what possessed me to do it. When the muscles below retracted sharply, I pulled my hand away with an apology.

"You didn't hurt me," he reassured, taking my hand and resettling it in the middle of his chest, "I'm a bit guarded about it, is all."

I moved my palm to the left until I felt defiantly strong beating beneath. I stayed on that spot and got lost for a moment watching the hypnotic, gently rising echo of that pulse in his neck.

"'Would you rather be kicked by a leg that's coiled, or a leg that's fully extended?'" I asked rhetorically, repeating the stable hand's mantra that we'd both heard so many times that we were certain we were permanently, infallibly programmed.

"Yes, I know. It's as I said. But this morning I was actually thinking of before, of you, lying on the hay with that journal you kept pretending to be interested in."

"I was interested. It's just that you were more interesting."

Treize laughed softly. "And I thought I was the only one pretending. Anyway, it was three in the morning, and I began thinking of the way you looked in the stable, the way you were stretched out, the way your hand rested on your stomach, like this." He demonstrated cautiously on himself. "You had your leg up, and when you looked over at me... I don't know what it was about the way you were looking at me, but I could barely focus."

"Hey, you got kicked after I left."

"I'm not blaming you," he said lightly. "And, as I lay here, I listened you next to me, breathing, fast asleep, and the sound mingled with my memory of you, pooled and snowballed, and my mind went off in a rather more inappropriate direction. I mulled over the conundrum of my current limitations and considered alternatives, which culminated in a tortured cycle of raunchy fantasies that fell very much along the lines of what just happened."

"But you didn't want to wake me." I smiled against his cheek. "So you just lay here for three hours."

"I was, ah, debating resolving the matter myself," he admitted, his tone taking on that thick edge again, "but I thought you might be interested. There came a point when I couldn't think about it anymore."

"I was dreaming that we were getting inoculations."

I felt his fingers under my chin, coaxing me to lift my head again to look at him.

"You really are incredible." His eyes were so clear then, unclouded by thought or distraction. "Beautiful. I don't tell you often enough, but I always think it."

I told him in the language of my mother that I loved him, the only thing I remembered in her dialect, the expression I'd heard most often, smoothly rolling and gently guttural. It was effortless, like the truth should always be.

"What does that mean?"

I pressed firmly on that spot right above his heart. "It means that I feel the same about you."

xoxoxoxoxoxo

Another moment I wish I could have photographed: Me and Treize sitting up in bed, casually dressed, barefoot, me working, Treize writing, doodling, refusing to show me. The window open, the breeze stirring the curtains. Me, happy. Treize, happy. The world of war was with us, tangible in the simulations I ran, but not consuming us. Treize, light, not really caring. Me, glad for it, this time without guilt.

He leaned to the left until his head was touching mine, eyes fixed on the small computer I had on my lap. "How is it going?"

I shrugged. "Things I could have done as a plebe, but it's hardly worth complaining over since I get to do them from home."

He leaned further in. "You're not doing it right."

"Well then, Instructor, Cadet respectfully requests to be educated."

Treize reached over, pulled up a command screen, and typed in a new trajectory for OZ's latest supersonic transporter. Instead of continuing on its course around the planet, it slung out of orbit, past Luna, past Lagrange Point 2, and then further, off, off, off into space.

"It wants to go."

"Go where?" I laughed. "Into the Sun?"

"That's where it belongs."

He smiled wistfully and watched as the program terminated with a warning tone and a message: ERROR! Object Exceeded Simulation Parameters.

He laid his chin on my shoulder and kissed my neck with open mouth. I tensed, relaxed, and my head drooped to the opposite side.

"You always smell great," he said, breath warm and wet against my skin. He inhaled deeply. "Did you know that?"

My lips parted with a sigh and I shook my head. His hand began creeping up my shirt, over the most prominent scar I had, a long, rudimentary field-surgical cut made to dig out several large pieces of jagged metal from a sabotaged jet fuel tank.

"Do you want to see what I'm working on?"

I laughed again, this time with a breathy edge. "You're working?"

"In a sense. And, in another sense, definitely not."

He sat upright with significantly less discomfort than even a few days earlier and flipped back a few pages in the graph paper notebook he'd been working in.

"I was thinking of revisions for the Specials' physical fitness regulations. What you and I spoke about earlier."

On one page, he'd scrawled the description of the modifications. First was a statement regarding changing the standard for push-ups, newly requiring the arm to bend to a ninety-degree angle or smaller or else the repetition would not count on the physical fitness test. Principle: To be able to get up when you've fallen down flat, full ruck and gear, an additional weight that could easily exceed fifty kilos. He also made notes about the addition of the pull-up, with rationalization that one must be able to hoist oneself into one's own suit in the event that the automatic winching system was down.

"I don't know how you write like that."

"Like what?"

"Like a manual."

"Well, when you author enough of them, you get a sense for it."

Back before Treize had become the de facto leader of the Corps, he'd singlehandedly rewritten nearly every regulation the organization abided by. And though he was nothing for quoting specific sections and paragraphs like some of the other commanders ("I have better things to do with my time," he'd explain), he knew every rule forwards and backwards.

He then flipped to a page scrawled with the heading "Real Exercise." One picture showed a soldier in his PT uniform chopping wood under the caption "The Log Chop." Another picture showed a soldier with a shovel, scooping from enormous mounds of what appeared to be horse muck. Caption: "The Shit Fling." I smirked at the pictures - which were neither poorly nor particularly well drawn - and the impetus behind them. Treize had been punished with such activities on a regular basis as a younger man, as had I. And he was right, that was real exercise. A look of mutual amusement passed between us.

"I think our soldiers have very little understanding of what constitutes true physical exertion."

"Most of your soldiers didn't grow up quite in this environment."

"I so badly want to toss some of those lieutenants in a pile of mess like this," he said dreamily, pointing to the mountain of manure and used hay, "to see their reactions. Like that bunkmate I had at my first duty station."

"The prissy one in the top bed who used to jack off all the time?"

Treize made a small sound of exasperation. "I cannot count how many times I awoke in the middle of the night thinking there was an earthquake. We were at New Edwards, after all."

I pictured fifteen-year-old Treize's face upon awakening to something like that and then upon the realization of what was really transpiring - the keen alertness, the disgusted sneer, the irritated balling of the fists.

"What did you do?"

"I punched him in the ass and yelled at him to do it in the bathroom stalls like everyone else."

"You punched him in the ass?"

"I punched whatever part of him was overhead. I was not aiming for specifics. It simply happened to be his rear end - and this is after enduring this behavior for two months without complaint, mind you. He showed me the bruise later that week, as though I would want to see it. I'm not sure what he was thinking."

"Maybe he was thinking about you all those nights."

"Good lord, I hope not. He was a troll."

"But you wouldn't have minded if he were good looking."

"That is not what I meant," he backpedaled. "I meant that - "

"You might want to stop there." I slid my hand between the current page and the next, trying to peek. "And the rest of this?"

Treize pressed the page down, stopping me. "That one is not ready yet."

"Oh, come on."

He barely put up a fight, and when I turned the page, I saw a crude stick figure drawing of two people clearly having sex. In fact, they were in the same position that we'd tried earlier that week. The caption said "Modified Sexual Position Number Three for Category Two Equine Injuries."

My face got warm, and I knew I must have been blushing furiously. He pointed to the one on top.

"That's you."

"I gathered."

He was very close again, and he brushed my hair behind my ear so that he could whisper in it. "You looked so hot…"

I swallowed hard. "I didn't know you were into pornography."

"I was inspired." I felt his tongue.

"So," I ventured unsteadily, "what are positions one and two?"

"I'm not sure yet." He pulled back and tapped his finger to his chin in a gesture of mock-contemplation. "We will have to research and document the proper procedures before I submit this to Training and Indoctrination. We only have..." He looked at his wrist at the watch that wasn't there. "...A week-and-a-half left. Do you like how I did that, by the way? Started with position three?"

"You brilliance is unparalleled. You really plan on going back so soon?"

"I am feeling much better."

"I can tell."

xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxox

"What about this one?"

"That one is good. That will be excellent for the sauce, I think."

I pulled gave it a quick yank, broke it off from the roots, and stuck it in the small basket Treize carried.

It wasn't my first time mushroom hunting. However, all the times we'd gone before, Treize had done the choosing and picking while I'd held the basket. Even injured, he'd insisted on doing it himself until I hugged him from behind and told him that he didn't have to be like that - like what? - like the damnably stubborn man he seemed inherently, irreparably to be. You don't have to be tough for me, I'd said. Let me help. After a long beat of quiet, a session of personal bargaining, he'd reluctantly agreed. Strange, because I'd thought it a lost cause from the get-go.

"And this one?"

"Perfect..."

I crouched down to pick it -

"...if you want to spend the night draped over the toilet, vomiting so hard that all the blood vessels in your eyeballs burst from the force of it."

My hand froze and swiftly retracted. "Sounds like you've had experience."

"An unfortunate mistake. But it looks very similar to that one you just picked, doesn't it?"

"Maybe we should stick with just tomatoes."

"Nonsense. I won't let you pick a bad one. And if by chance one slips by, well, we'll be in it together, won't we?"

"And I thought you had no sense of romance."

"I am romantic."

"Really? With whom?"

Treize shifted his weight and hugged his free arm over himself, over his wound, grasping his opposite elbow. The temperature was cooling quickly as the sun set, and it was almost too chilly for our late spring jumpers. His hair, meticulously, fashionably mussed in a style he could never get away with on duty, strained against the product that held it as the wind began to pick up.

"You are not precisely Prince Charming."

I eyed him without malice, finding it surprisingly easy to shrug off a comment that might usually send me into a fit of spiteful retort. "What about this one?" I pointed vaguely at no one mushroom in particular.

"Fine."

"What, are you mad now?"

"No."

"Then what?"

"It's getting cold. Let's go back."

Without waiting, he turned and started down the wooded path.

xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo

He snatched the paper out of my hand.

"'This is my grandmother's favorite gnocchi recipe. She used to make it for us when we were children. This is real Italian cooking, not that garbage you'll find in some cook book. I hope you have fun making and eating it. Eternally yours unto the ends of the universe, Lucrezia.'"

I snatched it back. "It does not say that. It says 'Yours, Noin.'"

"I was reading the subtext."

"Please. I'm just a friend."

"A friend she wants to procreate with."

"Look at us!"

"I think we're more than friends, don't you?"

He drew closer, backing me up against the kitchen counter. The blue of his eyes was charged with heat and mischief, and just as he was kissing me, pressing himself to me as I reciprocated with like vigor, my hands in his hair, my mouth hungry for him, Lara walked in. I saw her in my periphery, saw tastefully-shaped brows shoot up, her fingers fly over her shocked, gaping lips, and then I watched her do an abrupt about-face and rush back out of the kitchen. Embarrassed, I put my hands on Treize's chest and tried to push him away.

"What?" he hissed, pushing even harder against me, digging his hips into mine. "You think she doesn't know? You think they don't notice that you never sleep in your room? You think they don't hear us when I'm fucking you?" The way he said "fucking" was almost like an onomatopoeia, such was the thrusting force of it. "They probably listen outside the door."

"They do not!"

"You must admit, we do make a sexy couple."

I scoffed. "That's beside the point."

"Is it?" He let go, turned around, and faced the cutting board on the island. There was a chopping sound, and when he turned back, he held half of a deep maroon tomato out towards me. "Here. Eat this."

I intended to take only a bite, but instead he shoved the entire thing in my mouth. It was so much that I had to make a concerted effort to keep it all in, my only means of protest the perturbed look I gave him and a muffled, unintelligible, sarcastic "Thanks."

As he watched me struggle, the luminosity of his smile grew with every troubled bite, until it was brilliant, exuberant, dashing. He looked very handsome then. Roguish and unburdened. Forever young. Ecstatically alive.

"I love you."

I stopped chewing, palm over my lips to keep the juice from dripping out while I tried to swallow what I could.

"I want you to know."

I blinked, unable to do anything but look ridiculous. He moved in close again and touched his hands lightly to my tomato-bloated cheeks. There was such tenderness and endearment in his eyes, I'll never forget it.

"Remember that always."

xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo

"I will miss this."

He shook the last of his medication into his hand. He had another two refills, but he wouldn't fill them. He wasn't like me, a man who would take prescription drugs as a chemical vacation. He wouldn't be on duty in any state of intoxication, no matter how slight. He had too much at stake, too many lives in his hands to be anything but absolutely, crushingly serious.

I stuffed the last of my shirts in my duffel and pulled the zipper closed. "Miss what?"

"Feeling good."

I turned around and saw him swallow the pill dry. He was sitting on the edge of his bed, wearing every article of his battle dress uniform except the soft cap. The look on his face was one of resignation, a solemn, wordless acknowledgement of something he didn't ever want to say aloud.

I, without headgear or blouse, crossed my arms over my chest. "I think you have a problem."

"Most likely, I have many problems. We all do."

"I'm talking about you." And your father, I didn't say.

We spent a few moments in silence as he probably calculated the cost/benefit ratio of discussing the matter with me. He bent down with nothing more than a clench of the jaw and pulled hard on the laces of his stiff-ankled jump boots, tying them into a quick, practiced knot. He'd earned the right to wear them by jumping out of so many airplanes at so many altitudes, a distinction also shown by a small patch above his name tape featuring the Greek letter lambda. On my chest was the same, except my lambda was wreathed in ivy, meaning that I'd jumped higher, stratospheric, and more often. Only five had ever been awarded in the history of the Federation. He was never jealous.

"The possibility hasn't escaped me."

"I don't suppose you'll ever do anything about it."

"No." He stood smoothly, looking every bit invincible, though he would be barred from physical fitness training for another month while he continued to heal. "There's some functionality to it. It keeps me measured."

"I don't even know what that's supposed to mean." I frowned. "What do you think would happen if you did something about it?"

The smile that spread slowly across his lips was whimsical, so distantly departed from his "despondency," or whatever avoidant euphemism he used to describe what was really going on.

"I might muster out and live happily ever after."

xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

What a fucking joke. It's not funny, though. Not one bit.

I hate him for leaving me. I hate him for thinking that I'd be fine on my own. I fucking hate him for it.

I booted up my computer in the truck and logged on the network just in time to hear his daughter proclaim that she was the rightful heir to the World Nation. Jesus Christ, Treize. Couldn't you have told me? I know that you knew about her. I could see it in your face, even though I had no idea what exactly I was looking at…

When I saw her then, I saw him, and when I heard the words coming out of her mouth, I wanted to throw up.

"Can you go any faster?"

The speedometer crept higher. In the distance I could see the expansive, softly fluorescent blanket of low-hanging clouds looming over the city like a curse. The dense line of opposing traffic grew thicker and slower as more people fled the capitol, unsure of what they were fleeing but knowing intuitively that the capitol wasn't the place to be at a time of war. A time of war. Didn't we just have one of those? Wasn't that one supposed to have been the last?

A half-kilometer ahead of us, a police checkpoint forced the few cars brave enough to venture into a potential battle zone to a standstill. Vadimas swore softly as we slowed and fell into the queue. With the truck idling, I could hear the wailing of an old air raid siren outside.

"This won't work. You have to pull off this road. Up there."

"That is not a road you want to go down, young man."

"I have to get into the city. Find another way."

He yanked on the wheel, slammed down the gas, whipped the truck around, and took us back in the direction from which we came.

"That wasn't entirely subtle."

"I know a better way!"

He was smiling, hands tight on the wheel, leaning forward enthusiastically. Excited. It was exciting. My blood was thick with adrenaline, and the only thing dampening it was the thought of that little girl, Treize's little girl, brainwashed and bastardized into some sort of sick figurehead. Somebody we all recognized and somebody we didn't even know. Somebody we idolized and somebody we suddenly feared. It was disorienting. Disturbing. Disgusting.

I wondered what he'd been to her, if he'd held her, if he'd played with her, if he'd sent her birthday presents, if he'd kissed her on the cheek and told her he loved her. I didn't know. I still don't know. And not knowing still bothers me as much as it ever did.

Vadimas took an exit, a highway, another exit, a country route, another exit, and then another highway, managing without guidance to sneak us into the city limits without encountering another blockade. I worked with him, checking the computer, directing him down the few roads that hadn't been flagged by the network as being blocked off or overrun with people. The city was a nightmare. Everywhere we drove, people were huddling in the streets, scared, shouting, putting the thinly-stretched police force on edge. Throngs pushed against disproportionately tiny crowd-control teams. Vadimas struggled to keep us moving, and I sank back in my seat.

The Preventer HQ building was, unfortunately, right near the city center. The base proper, where the hangars and runway were, was on the outskirts and occupied a large, gaping black space on the otherwise detailed satellite image I referenced on my computer. It used to be an OZ base. I remembered being temporarily stationed there for the second phase of my officer training. There two-dozen hangars there that had once housed over 100 suits. Mostly Leos, Treize's favorite, though there was one each for Tragos, Aries, and, later, Taurus units. I hoped that those hangars weren't completely empty, hoped that Une was still as paranoid as she'd ever been, still imbued with the propensity towards deliberate concealment that had made her such an unpredictable commander and appropriate officer for a secret organization like OZ.

We turned down the access road that led to the main gate of the headquarters campus, one dotted at regular intervals with warning signs: Not A Throughway - Visitors Must Be Accompanied By Authorized Personnel - All Vehicles Will Be Subject To Search - Please Have Identification And Proof Of Vehicle Ownership Available. There were two men at the guard shack armed with assault rifles; one had a German Shepherd tethered to his wrist. They were in combat gear of the same pattern and hue as we'd used in the Specials, the only difference being the artfully geometric "P" patch sewn onto the left shoulder. Vadimas rolled down both of our windows.

"Well, ho-ly shit," one of the guards named Costas said when he got a good look at me. I was suddenly thrust back into the world of the International Standard, something I'd reminisced in and listened to but hadn't actually spoken since arriving in France. I harbored the brief, irrational fear that perhaps I'd forgotten how to speak the language I'd been using since I was old enough to put word to concept.

The two men didn't look especially comfortable with their lot. The one who wasn't Costas, nametag lost in a shadow, let his weapon droop by the strap over his shoulder, reminding me of one of those fair-weather lieutenants in Croatia who hated ground training week with prickling passion. Costas put up a good effort to look professional, but he kept his finger on the trigger of his rifle in a way that screamed amateur. I suspected that they were regular field agents posted at the gate especially for emergency lockdown. This wasn't uncommon in the martial sector. We'd practiced it in the military regularly.

"I'm looking for Director Une," I explained unceremoniously, succeeding with no small effort to calm the urgency in my voice. The last thing these guys wanted was to meet with a keyed-up Zechs Merquise - least of all when I was trying to persuade them to permit me entrance.

"Yeah, well, she's probably looking for you, too."

"Think so?" Interesting. I was fairly certain that I'd been declared dead.

Costas put his hand on the frame of the truck and leaned in as he spoke. "Rumors. Something some ore miner said. Some different guy told the press he saw you on C-208. Another guy said you were a Buddhist monk or something. One agent here said she saw you once in the shop, at the vending machine, buying a candy bar. Point is that, around here, your 'death' hasn't exactly been accepted."

The agent with the dog shifted his weight, revealing his name to be Ma. "Just wave him through, Costas. Shit." He had a gaunt, sallow face, but his eyes were quick and lucid. He took a long drag off of a cigarette I hadn't seen him holding and then crushed it under his boot.

"You do remember what this guy did, don't you? It sure as hell wasn't some 'oopsie!' slip-up! He wanted to kill every damn one of us!" He turned away, into the shadow, and when he continued to speak, his voice was laced with venom. "You and your fucking dolls. We could barely keep our shit together out there…"

Ma regarded his partner for a moment, a moment of acknowledgment, a nod of validation, and then nudged his chin at me. "Are you here to kill us?"

"No."

He pulled something out of his pocket and gave it to the dog. A biscuit, from the crunchy chomping sound. "I do remember something," Ma said to Costas. "I remember him kicking everybody's ass. I think we could use some of that about now. Let him through."

"Yes, just fucking let him through." Costas stepped back into the light, shaking his head, smiling mirthlessly. "Why the fuck not? What's one more fucking OZ crony around this joint? Might as well change this to a fucking lion's head," he spat, pointing to the patch on his arm.

"Are you looking forward to having a colony dropped on your head? I'm not. Plus," Ma jerked his head in my direction as he addressed me, "I think you're the only one who can pilot that bitch in Hangar 5."

The bitch in Hangar 5 that only I could pilot… I wondered what that was, kindling hope that it was some reconstruction of Tallgeese and not Wing Zero or (please) not another Epyon. I could tell by the way Ma spoke, the way dismissed decorum, the way he regarded me with neither spite nor admiration, that he was a former hangar rat. If only because of that fact alone, I respected him.

Costas sighed and hoisted his rifle over his shoulder carelessly. "How do you know that thing even works?"

"'Cause I stuffed in her beautiful guts with my own hands." He waved said long-fingered hand incrementally. "Go on. 20th floor. I'll tell security you're coming." His gaze, piercing, settled on Costas' face. "You got a problem with that?"

"Whatever." He shrugged acquiescently. "We're all going to die anyway." He then looked squarely at me, his eyes sore, tired. "Some peace, huh?"

Costas and I stayed locked like that for a moment, frozen, nothing of particular significance passing between us. I'd made a terrible decision, he'd bared the brunt of it, like so many others had. I supposed that I'd have to get used to these sorts of encounters. God knows I deserved every single one of them.

He triggered the gate to open from a remote in his hand. I mumbled my thanks, and we navigated a small maze of cement blockades to merge onto the campus' main road. When we pulled up to the front entrance of the towering headquarters building without incident, I was astounded almost to the point of laughter. No guns were blazing, no bullhorns were calling for my unconditional surrender. The entire event was extremely anticlimactic.

Vadimas threw the shifter into park and clapped his hands on his lap. "Well, I guess this is the end of the line!"

I unbuckled my seatbelt and put my laptop away. "You make it sound so grave."

"You're right - I suppose this is really the beginning of the line for you."

We watched together as the first flurries of snow melted on the windshield. The smile on his face was one of satisfaction. Perhaps he considered bringing me to Brussels another gesture of penance for the sins he felt he'd committed. How ridiculous. How old-fashioned. The man was over seventy years old. What did he think constituted adequate atonement, anyway?

"Do you still miss her?" I asked quietly. "Your wife."

I'd seen pictures in the hallway, the living room, his bedroom. Their wedding photo, photos with their children, their grandchildren. Her existence was palpable, even after her death.

He turned his head to look at me, and his smile broadened, clashing sorrowfully with his words.

"You never stop." He spoke directly to me, about me. He knew. "Even when you think you have."

When I stepped out of the vehicle, I was distinctly aware in that moment that I would have some sort of a life on the other end of the Barton obstacle. I didn't know then that I would be officially pardoned because of what I would do a few short hours after entering Preventer Headquarters. I think my confidence had to do with something completely intangible, like the way the air tasted. Something silly and magical.

I slung my bag over my shoulder. Out of the corner of my eye, I could see a pair of agents blatantly gaping at me from the front entranceway. Surely they had better things to do, considering the potentially planet-destroying crisis at hand, but I suppose it would have been like winning the gossip jackpot to be one of the first to behold the resurrected incarnation of the Lightening Count.

I turned and grasped onto the open truck door. I was always monumentally terrible at these things, confessions, gratitude, expressions of fondness. The naked honesty frightened me, probably something to do with attachment issues, dead parents, post-traumatic stress, dismally low self-esteem, and so on. I'm a therapist's wet dream of psychological entanglements. Goodbye has always been the hardest for me. I hated saying it to Treize at the end of leave, at the end of the day, the end of a telephone conversation. Something about the last goodbye being the last one ever, a fear that actualized for me on Christmas Eve of 195. When was our last goodbye? A real goodbye, not some court-martialed, White Fang goodbye… How terrible that I can't even remember it…

"I don't think there's any way I can properly thank you for what - "

He made that exaggeratedly disgusted face that he usually made when dismissing something ridiculous I said. "Bah! Save it. Please."

"No."

"Well, then don't draw it all out like a greeting card. If you feel the need to say it, just say it."

"Thank you."

"You don't have to thank me," he said with a wave of his hand. "I did it because you're too young to suffer the way you would have it. You're barely even an adult! Wait until you're an old man like me, then you can horse-whip, neglect, and curse yourself all you want."

I nodded, closed the door, and spoke to him through the open passenger window. "If everything goes well, I'll be back for my things."

"I look forward to seeing you then, 'Mr. Iversen.'"

His wizened hand latched onto the shifter and put the vehicle into drive. As he rolled up the window, he called out one last thing to me:

"You deserve to be happy!"

I snorted. "Right."

I watched him drive away, back to France, back to his vegetables and his cellar full of nostalgia. What a strange man, I thought. Strange. Wonderful. He hadn't even been afraid. But then, I suppose when one has outlived the Federation, very little intimidates.

As I climbed the stairs to the entrance, I considered the reeling cascade of events that had brought me to that single moment in history. How many of those events had been directed or motivated by one man and my love for him? Countless. Most. After we met, my life was never the same. I'd been sucked into his orbit by an act of unthinkable brutality, and flung out of it… no, I was never flung out of it. I think I'm still in it, even today.

The two agents at the door parted the way for me, continuing to gawk in my wake. When I strode past the notified security desk, one agent nodded her acknowledgement while the other, telephone to ear, stared blankly. As I entered the elevator, I brushed shoulders with one agent I recognized as a former subordinate of mine. He greeted me as though we'd last seen each other in morning formation and moved with haste towards the lobby.

On the twentieth floor, I walked the long hall that led to only one office: Hers. She was in there, the woman who had loved Treize so much that she'd lost control of herself, repeatedly spited by the way her reality contended with the web of rumor that always surrounded them. They were betrothed. She earned her promotions by giving him head. They were secret lovers. They had kinky leather sex. They were secretly married. Pretty much the same things they alternatively accused of us. I never really believed insane love and plain insanity to be the cause of her… internal conflicts. Love hurts, especially the unrequited type, but I'm inclined to chalk it up to a crisis of conscience. How was she supposed to reconcile her adoration of Treize with the atrocities and acts of duplicity he asked her to commit regularly? At least she'd found the point of disconnect - so many couldn't or refused to see it. And at least, upon discovering it, she hadn't abandoned him like I had.

From behind her closed door, I heard her arguing with somebody over the phone, her voice laced with the urgency and insistence that befitted the current emergency state of the ESUN. I opened the door and asked forgiveness for the intrusion. Even with the startled scowl on her face, my first thought was that she looked very pretty with her hair down. I smiled in return.

It was good to be back.


	11. My Life as a Normal Person

Title: Limbo

Chapter: 11/12: My Life as a Normal Person

Pairing: Past Treize/Zechs, Zechs/Noin, Zechs/OMC (Bear with me on this)

Spoliers: Series, EW, Episode Zero

Warnings: Death themes, male/male and male/female sexual situations, suggestions, and sensuality, foul language, grief, angst, cynicism, debatable instances of sap. Rated M for swears and darkness

Disclaimer: I don't own any part of GW. No monies have been or will be made off of this thing.

Please see Limbo 1 for important notes! Note the pairings. They're different for this chapter.

This is the end, beautiful friends. This chapter alternates mostly from past to present. There aren't any convoluted flashbacks within flashbacks or anything, so I don't think you'll have any trouble figuring it out. It's also very, very long, so be prepared. It starts as a direct continuation of Limbo 10 and continues through time.

This whole story is dedicated to LoveyouHateyou, who is an amazing writer, thoughtful critic, and all around fantastic person. You can find his profile in my Favorite Authors list. LH, you're the best. Thank you so much for being an inspiration and a friend.

I also want to offer sincere thanks to all who have commented and/or added me to any of their Favorites lists, with special thanks to Masamune Reforged for giving such great feedback. I'm so glad that you've enjoyed this, and I hope you find the last chapter satisfying.

Note: I split this chapter into two parts on 8/15/09, in case you're confused.

xxxxxxxxxx

Forty-five minutes later, Tallgeese and I were hurling down the runway on the back of a low-orbital launch vehicle. Above us, there was a clearing, a part in the cloud cover through which all I could see were stars. Faster and faster we went, gaining organ-smashing speed in order to climb the launch spire. The stars were fixed, constant, and watchful, their calm presence like a benediction…

xxxxxxxxxx

I slammed the door of the jeep behind me and immediately headed towards the open field to the west of the house. I distantly registered the sound of Treize's door closing, his steps across the graveled drive, silencing in the grass as he followed. As I walked, I loosened my bowtie. Pulled it off. Let it drop onto the ground. One by one, in between long, irritated steps, I yanked off my shoes, then socks, leaving them behind me in a trail of graduated relief. As I started up the hill, a large, grassy mound that offered a beautiful view of the surrounding forest, I unclipped my cummerbund, useless, idiotic accessory, wadded it up, and threw it.

"What time is this thing supposed to start?" I grumbled when I crested the hill and looked up at the sky, which was a cloudless, shimmering smear of blinking stars. It was a new moon, and Moscow was far to the east, the distant city lights far away, another land, another world.

Treize stopped short of me. I heard him loosening, divesting, placing things in neat piles, the jangle of cufflinks falling into his pocket.

"Between two and three."

We'd already been to Moscow and back for a joint Romefeller/Federation event, the purpose of which was not precisely clear to me. To celebrate victory, Treize had said. What victory? The promise of victory? Why not? Since when did Romefeller need an excuse to throw a party? We decided to fly back to the estate for the night instead of holing up at one of the hotels for the frank, uncomplicated purpose of sleeping together, an opportunity we took whenever we could, though I hardly felt like sleeping with him after the miserable time I'd had. What a farce. What a pitiful joke.

I shrugged out of my jacket and spread it out on the ground. I fumbled my cufflinks off and handed them back to Treize. They were his anyway.

I wasn't drunk enough. I wondered how I'd had so much to drink at the party and yet still hadn't gotten completely blitzed.

"We should have brought that vodka."

Treize removed his coat as well and laid it beside mine. "So we could get pissed and pass out before the shower even started?"

"Sure, why not?"

Treize turned and faced me. If there'd been more light, I would have seen the brush of red on his cheeks, a flush that had made him look healthy and virile, cheerfully glowing on the dance floor. He was many drinks from drunk, but his fair skin colored easily, giving him away. He'd flown his jet and driven the jeep all the way home without the slightest sway of intoxication, something I wouldn't have been able to accomplish gracefully in my state, though I probably wouldn't have crashed and killed us both.

"You're in a mood tonight."

"No shit."

He sat down on one of the jackets, mine, I think, though I was more than a little distracted.

"Was it that horrible?" There was a twang of teasing in his voice, goading, subtly sniping.

I shoved my sleeves up my forearms. "It was worse."

"I do not see how it could have been so terrible. You hardly said a word to anybody."

"No, I could barely get in edgewise over your posturing."

He laughed dryly. His attention to me was light, condescending, purposefully so. He looked out at the endless spread of trees that appeared like a black sea below the luminosity of the sky.

"Don't pretend that you had any interest at all in conversing with them. You were bent on hating that party from the moment I told you about it."

"Come on, Treize," I said, my words both exasperation and plea. "I can't stand that stuff and you know it. Why do you have to drag me with you anyway?"

"Because the Foundation is interested in you."

"I don't know why."

"Truly?" I practically heard his left eyebrow rising. Always the left. He'd tried once to retrain to the right side, but the unavoidable peripheral contortion of the rest of his face made the endeavor short-lived. Why he cared so much about it, I never understood. Probably one more thing he tried just to try it, to see if he could be expressively ambidextrous.

"You seemed to be having a fine enough time," I spat. "You worked the entire crowd."

"Yes, I suppose you had a fantastic view of it from the balcony."

I smiled smugly. "It was quite nice, actually."

No small-talk, no pandering, no glad-handing. That's what the balcony meant to me. I'd seen Treize's face drop when I excused myself from a charmless conversation with Duke Dermail's wife, Treize's great aunt or something. He had to have known that I'd be up there for the rest of the evening. He had to have known…

"They were asking about you, you know," Treize stated. His fingers picked at the grass, tearing up individual blades carelessly. "Half of my conversations revolved around your recent successes. The other half were my conjuring excuses about why you weren't available to talk with them."

"Must be hard to be a handler when your prized pony is uncooperative."

"Sometimes I cannot believe that anybody expected you to grow up to be a politician."

"Oh, fuck you." I clenched my teeth as the slow, hours-long simmer of anger in my belly surged to a white-hot boil.

"And perhaps the most trying aspect of this is that you are perfectly capable of being pleasant and diplomatic. You simply choose not to. Why is that?" He craned his head back and finally looked up at me. "Do you enjoy playing the role of the dark loner, skulking around in the rafters?"

"And didn't you just look lovely with Eva Septem!" I crowed, clasping my hands together in a blatantly theatrical display that very poorly concealed my disgust. "What a handsome pair!"

The son of a bitch laughed again. "Of course you bring this up."

"I don't think I've ever seen you look so charming. Or charmed."

"She was attempting to irritate her father," he explained as he returned his focus to the scenery, his tone weary, softly aggravated. "What better way than to ask me to dance?"

"How magnanimous of you!" I was fuming at this point, hands in tight fists at my side. "You certainly played the part convincingly enough. I thought you were going to throw down and screw right there!"

"You are being completely ridiculous."

"You saved that asshole's life!"

"What is it that you want?"

"You should bill him for your physical therapy."

"You want something. You want to say something. Say it."

"No!" I despised it when he pinned me right to the point, threw me into a corner and talked down to me until I gave in. I sure as hell wasn't going to give him the satisfaction that night. "I don't have anything to say."

"What do you want?" He was looking up at me again, face blank, neither interested nor disinterested. Just like the person I always wanted to be, that I could never be. Cold. So, so cold.

"Why do you think I want anything?"

"I know you. You get like this, like a child who won't do anything but flail about until somebody figures out what the problem is." He sighed very quietly. "I'm not in the mood for charades."

Like it was all a game. My outrage. My jealousy. My desire for affection. My hatred of our situation, our class, his position, my "successes." He was lucky I'd gone to the balcony. If I hadn't, I think I would have done something embarrassing. I might have grabbed him by the lapels and kissed him right there, in front of everybody, just to let them know that he was mine, that they should stop fantasizing about him as their husband, son-in-law, friend, or whatever other foolish notions they had rattling around behind their eyeballs. Mine. Back the fuck off, you sycophantic fucks, you ugly little cunts, Eva-fucking-bitch-Septem. This one's mine.

"You know what I want? I want you to blow me."

His laughter was tightly strung, distinctly lacking the amusement of earlier in the conversation. "Is that it?"

"I want you to put my cock in your mouth and suck it."

"So, that's what this is about?"

"Of course it isn't! But you asked me what I want. That's it."

He lifted his hand and pressed it to the crotch of my pants. "You don't feel like you want it."

I scowled. "I'm not a fucking robot."

There was a pause. Treize took one last look out over the landscape, as though it was the last time he'd ever see it, before he pushed himself up and into a kneeling position in front of me. I cleared my throat and was mildly surprised that he was actually going to do it. He put his hands on my hips then slid them together to meet in the middle. He hadn't touched me all night. Not in the plane from the Continent. Not at the party. Not even a friendly, chummy, purely hetero touch. Not in the plane to the adjacent town. Not in the jeep. I'd wanted it so badly, for him to want it, to make a move. He didn't, though. He made me fight for it. Ask for it. Demand it. Why? I couldn't break through the why of it.

He pulled at my shirt, lifted it, touched his lips just above the waistband of my pants. I shuddered. His movements were passionless. Mechanical. I closed my eyes and pretended that he was excited about it, that he wanted to suck me off. I was quite good at fooling myself, for by the time he had my pants unzipped, I was absolutely ready for it. I choked back a moan when he took me in his mouth, which I imagined he was enjoying even though he probably wasn't. He was good. Proficient. He knew how I liked it…

When I threw my head back, overwhelmed by the sensation, I opened my eyes. It was then that I could see the first brilliant streams of light as they streaked across the web of constellations.

"Stop… stop it." I put my hands on Treize's head, urging him to stop. He did.

"This isn't right…" I whispered.

xxxxxxxxxx

Tallgeese and I passed through the soft, blue halo of the thermosphere together. Like every time, I was speechless. We detached and inertia took us further and further from Earth. The familiar calm before battle washed over me, warm like euphoria but exhilarating, even jubilant. I felt the surge of life in my veins and an intense feeling of protectiveness. Course set, I gripped the thrusters and took a deep breath. In a limitlessly expansive moment, every cell in my body resonated with every warrior in history.

It would be the last battle I would fight.

There was something so sad about watching Tallgeese go back into the hangar when it was all over. But then, it might have been the combat high I was coming down off of. I wonder if I wasn't remorseful about a phase of my life coming to a close with those rolling, shell-proof hangar doors. It's difficult to discern emotion from physiology sometimes. One could argue that they're the same.

The neighbor's dog is in my garden again. Sniffing around. Damn it. I think I'm getting carpal tunnel, and now I have to go to work.

I stop typing. Page 2,973, paragraph three. Nothing is in order. It's a mess. It's what happened yesterday before what happened when I was four. It's last week before last year. But the order of events doesn't matter. It's that I'm capturing and documenting them as soon as humanly possible.

I rise, walk to the window, and pound on it. The dog starts, legs outspread, its dumb, vacant face frozen. I pound again and yell to it that I'm going to… to what? Kill it? Chase after it? All options are ludicrous. I suppose the proper thing would be to build a fence, though I don't know why I should have to ruin my view because my neighbor is too big of a prick to build one for himself. Maybe I'll write an angry letter. Or maybe not. I'm not the type of neighbor who writes letters. Maybe I'll just grumble about it for a few minutes and forget about it until the next time it happens, per usual.

It's 8:45. Typically I roll into work at around 9:30, which is typically before Soren shows up. Soren the night owl is pleasantly liberal about start and end times. He's a quality-not-quantity type of supervisor. We work well together in a practical arrangement. Yes. Practical.

I wear what I want to work, another one of Soren's dictates offered under the general assumption that I wouldn't show up in something like leather pants. We do work at the Ministry of Culture, which calls for a modest level of propriety, though we're not under the thumb of any ministers or image-wary political types. Most of the other employees in the building wear suits and ties, blouses and skirts or primly-pressed slacks. At first I felt awkward in jeans, but nobody who's anybody seems to care one bit about what I wear.

It's because I'm still the prince to many of them, even though there's no crown anymore, no monarchy, no class-based political system at all to speak of. Just as Sanc has reabsorbed me, tacitly and with few demands, most of its people have come to a sort of settlement with my coming back home. Sancians, ever-practical, ever-sensible, don't cling to grudges for long. And now that I work for the government, rebuilding my country's heritage, even the last furious few have calmed to a sour, quiet agreement. Because of New Port's strict laws designed to keep the paparazzi out of everyone's faces, the dirt about me on the nets has trickled to an infrequent drip. I still receive the occasional hate letter or death threat, and some fuck face knocked my mailbox over a few months ago. Aside from that, my life in Sanc has been… quiet.

I walk to the kitchen, grab a wrapped loaf of zucchini bread from the counter, and put it in my bag. The vegetable is overrunning my plot, so I've had little choice but to harvest as much of it as possible and use it in any way I can. I've had quite my fill, so I've resorted to gifting it to the few people who won't laugh at or flat-out reject something from me. I got the seeds from Vadimas, that and a bunch of other things he gave me: his old papers, many of the salvageable things in his cellar, vestiges of his bygone OZ career. I've kept in touch with him ever since leaving him, calling him from Mars, then from Brussels, and now from New Port. He's one of my few friends, and I'm glad that older age hasn't tempered his lucidity or feistiness in the least. As equal parts homage and personal wish, I had a small building constructed on the south end of my property, my workshop, a place where I go to tinker with aircraft simulations and broken electronics when I feel I need serious distraction, which these days is rather more often than I'd like to admit.

I pause at the refrigerator and straighten out a photo of the Burkina Faso savannah. Every centimeter of the front side of my fridge is covered with photographs I've taken, arranged in a collage and suspended by strong magnets. There are no other pictures in the entire house, and I'm still not certain why I've kept it that way. Most are shots of scenery and things, with some discernable faces snug in between: a few of my sister, a couple of Noin, three of Dorothy, one of Une, two of Vadimas, one of the Project Mars team. They overlap thickly. It had started with one, a picture of my house on the first day I moved in, and then one by one they multiplied with every trip, every get-together, and every sifted-through box. Sometimes I'll come to the kitchen to find that one's fallen onto the floor, revealing another beneath it, and I'll wonder why I buried that one in the first place. I should rearrange them some time.

It's late summer. Beautiful. Warm at night, warm during the day, never too hot because of the cooling costal breeze. I decide to take my motorcycle into the city, a bike that's faster and more expensive than I probably need. I've gotten it up to 185 kph, and I think it could go faster if I wasn't such a wimp about it. I suppose I'm getting old. This is the year I've officially outlived Treize – numerically speaking. One could guess that it wasn't the best of birthdays.

In the garage, I tighten my bag across my back and bundle my hair in a ponytail. For an unprompted moment, I think (as I often do) about Noin, who is probably on her way back to Earth for furlough. There's a wry smile on my lips. Somehow, I don't think I'll be hearing from her…

xxxxxxxxxx

I closed the door behind me when I entered Noin's temporary office, which earned me an uneasy look from her. I doubt she knew what to expect from me considering the direction we'd gone in since we first left Earth in 197. Now that we were back and ready to return to the project for our second tour, I was sure she was living in a state of constant uncertainty about me. It was like having to tiptoe around a half-domesticated animal, poised to run, poised to stay. I didn't envy her.

"What's up, Zechs?" It was a question, not a greeting. She glanced down and busied herself gathering up a small stack of information pads on her desk that didn't particularly require gathering.

The first time I tried to form the words, I only swallowed. When they finally came out, they crackled and tried to crawl back down my throat."I'm not going back with you."

She paused, and one of her hands pressed down on the desk as if to steady her, though she was never one to be taken completely off guard. When she looked up at me, one side of her mouth was curled up in an odd semblance of a smile.

"You know, I think I knew that."

"I'm sorry."

I leaned back heavily against the wall, feeling my energy sapping away, being sucked into the pores of the drywall behind me. I'd been dreading telling her for nearly a week, and that was after having spent an additional week prior changing my mind repeatedly about the matter. Mars was busy, serious work interwoven at random intervals with triumph and massive failure, grinning camaraderie and vicious bickering. It was a cramped tangle of emotions caked with ubiquitous red dirt. It was exciting. It was boring. And, in the end, I couldn't bear to leave Earth again. It would have been formulaic to say "It's not you, it's me," but that was basically the truth of things.

"Don't be," she replied. Her effort to put on a good face was obvious in the way the easy dismissal on her lips contrasted with the disappointment in her eyes.

"How did you know?" I asked.

"Your hair," she observed, perceptive as always. "You haven't cut it."

I'd cut it off, all of it, during my first week on the Martian outpost. It hadn't been a matter of symbolism so much as a matter of glaringly obvious necessity. There had been very little water, and the rations of dry shampoo had been pitifully small. I'd walked straight into a losing battle with basic hygiene, and I would be damned if I was going to keep a nasty fall of dirty, unkempt hair for two years straight. It'd been shocking, though the double-PhD geologist who'd "seen it done enough times" at his cousin's barber shop did an admirable job with it. Such an odd sensation, running my hand up the back of my head and feeling so little. I couldn't count how many times Noin had caught me doing it, smiling, shaking her head. It had been a swift adjustment, one not nearly as complicated as I'd imagined it would be. And, contrary to what certain appalled individuals seemed inclined to think, it really did grow back.

"I'm sorry about everything."

"I just said that you don't have to be." Her voice was soft, understanding in the way that a mother is understanding when her child wets the bed. It made me feel immature and incapable of coping. Which I was.

Noin had grown to like my hair. I'd grown to like her. We'd worked well together, like we always had. She'd been easy to talk to, unwaveringly stable, quiet and talkative at all the right moments. She'd kissed me for the first time after Dr. Vasquez broke out a bottle of tequila for his birthday. She hadn't been drunk, just braver, and I'd kissed her in return.

She sank into a high-backed executive's chair that Une had cast off after finding it lumpy. "May I ask why?"

"It's too far."

There was a pause, and her lips thinned before she quietly uttered, "From him?" (Bingo again. Bingo, bingo, bingo. You win the jackpot, Lucy. But then, you always could see clean through me.) "I thought you liked that about Mars."

I liked the way she tasted. I liked the way she looked walking around my small quarters in nothing but her panties and issue tank top. I liked the way she looked naked, beneath me. A brave, hopeful part of me wanted to cling to that like, to hold it close, to kindle it into something deeper, something lasting, something solid and sustainable. Could I have loved her the way I love Treize? No. And why not? Was it her? No. It wasn't her. She's lovely. She's sweet and whip-smart. I got along with her better than I got along with Treize. So, what was it? What was the crux?

The answer is that there is no answer - no particularly good one, anyway. Not one that has ever made itself apparent to me. Should I look harder for it? Probably. But I won't. I won't because it's easier this way. Better this way.

"It's just too far," I repeated resignedly.

That was the answer I settled with. Part truth. Part excuse. I felt disconnected saying those words, deciding our relationship with them. Disembodied. Sterilized. Like somebody was saying them for me, lifting away my burden, keeping me in good faith with a man who was dead.

"It's been three years, Zechs. It's natural to lose some things."

"Those 'things' are all I have left of him."

Treize left me nothing, as in, no thing. The house had been picked bare by the scavenging herd that passed for his relatives, the household staff paid off, property sold. All of that history pulled apart, stripped away, and taken or auctioned off. Everything. Total liquidation. It tortured me that he did that, because it felt like a punishment. Dorothy had been foolishly optimistic enough in 196 to collect my things before the rest of the family got to them, and incidental among these items were things once belonging to Treize, things that had ended up in my possession for various reasons: a graphing calculator for Lake Victoria classes, a few books that I'd borrowed and never returned, a couple of obscurities, a compass with a broken face, a disk filled with simulation programs he'd written, a stopwatch for fuck knows what.

What he did intentionally leave me was all the money I'd ever need, a sum comparable to the trust fund he left the daughter I knew he knew he had. The rest of the profits from his assets and from the sale of hordes of stocks and bonds I hadn't know him to possess funneled directly into the Sancian National Reconstruction Fund as an anonymous donation. Such an elegant orchestration of posthumous instructions for somebody who'd planned on growing old with me. I'd smiled about the donation, though, with watery eyes and no bitterness. What a tremendous gift to me. Because it was for me. That I know in my heart.

It was on Mars that I'd started to forget. Conversations Treize and I'd had that had been so clear in my memory blurred over, their endings ambiguous, their emotional intonations dulled. Crucial words dropped out of recollection, meanings completely obscured. What had he given me for my twelfth birthday? My God, the panic that had ensued when I couldn't remember that basic fact had been crippling. On Mars, there had been nothing to tie me back to him, a perfect place to re-start one's life, it could be argued. But that wasn't what I wanted. I didn't want to forget a single thing, let lapse a single anniversary or birthday. What did I have but my memories? A calculator? A stopwatch? A compass that didn't even work? All useless shit without a context to connect them to. What I told Noin wasn't entirely a lie. Mars took me too far from him. She took me too far from him.

Her attention floated to a shelf that held a dress-right-dress line of field manuals that had become obsolete the year prior, and that strange smile was back. "I thought this might actually work." There was no self-pity there, only a simple acknowledgment of futility. Futility.

"I wanted it to."

I think I really did.

Her deep violet gaze locked on mine, and in it was comprehension of everything that I couldn't grasp about what was happening to me. In that moment, in the barest infancy of our break-up, I felt the first pang of regret.

"I guess it takes more than wanting, doesn't it?"

xxxxxxxxxx

The ride into the city is spectacular no matter the season, a long, curving, scenic road through the foothills within which the city nests. It passes by the forest that I used to run around in as a kid, the same forest that forms the western border of my property. I purchased my home last year, after I left Brussels, after I decided it was finally time to come home. I felt a silly sense of disloyalty towards Russia, which had been home to me for thirteen years, but there was nothing left for me there. I used to wonder why Treize wrote such cruel instructions in his will. I now think it's because he didn't want me languishing there, and I can't say for certain that I wouldn't have. With the option entirely removed, all my reasons for not returning to Sanc seemed flimsy and disgustingly self-pitying.

I spent one lost year in Brussels, after Noin left and before moving to New Port. It was an eleven-month blur, a rush of fleet-building, bureaucratic arm-wrestling, regret, recruitment shortages, and financial frustrations. Une had me assigned in a consulting role for the aerospace engineering department. Who should we contract out to? What are our fleet priorities? What contingencies are we least prepared for? They were all important questions, though none were especially stimulating to me. Where was my sense of urgency? Of responsibility? Of duty? Who would save the world if not us?

I wasn't feeling it. I dragged myself into work every day, worked to the point of exhaustion, and crawled back to the officer barracks to try to break apart the reasons why I felt like nothing had changed, like I hadn't moved on at all since France. Even with the passage of four years, nothing seemed clearer. There had been no great revelation of purpose. I was floating, dissociated, stuck.

I should probably wear a helmet. The law says I don't have to, so I don't. I let the speedometer creep higher than the police would appreciate. It's nowhere near 185 kph, but it doesn't have to be. I already feel the exhilaration of the morning.

xxxxxxxxxx

My eyes flickered and strained against the blinding light of a cloudy winter day streaming in from a source I couldn't pinpoint. I knew it was cloudy because it'd been cloudy every single day that month, a thick, downy blanket thrown over the ESUN capitol. The blotted sun seemed everywhere, right in front of my face, or was it just the hallway lights? I couldn't even tell. It was all horrible.

In front of me, a staircase descended to the landing. Below my cheek, cold, thinly carpeted floor. I lay there, blinking, marveling at the continuation of the spinning sensation that had settled me there in the first place. How many hours had it been? Not enough, I judged from the taste in my mouth. I felt sick, but I was too dizzy to get up and try to make myself throw up, which was typically my first step in massive hangover recovery. I don't know if it actually speeded the process, but it always made me feel just a little better, a small improvement that made the day just a little more bearable.

Tap. Tap. I raised my head. Slowly. Slowly. I vaguely remembered sitting down on the stairs earlier, just to take a rest, because, holy shit, the staircase was so long. It appeared that I'd sat – just for a minute! – and promptly proceeded to keel over. Blood rushed to my brain, and I pressed my palms to my temples and resisted the groan reflex.

"Not a very comfortable place to spend the night, hm?"

I turned my head. Slowly. Slowly. "No."

My sister was already dressed for the day. A long skirt. High boots. Dark leggings. Winter white sweater. Very chic. Her golden hair, like our mother's, fell over her shoulder when she tilted her head with a restrained smile.

"How long have you been sitting there?"

"Hmm... almost an hour. I wanted to make sure you were all right."

That was quite sweet of her, though I didn't thank her right at that moment, defaulting instead to gravelly crabbiness.

"You could have woken me."

"You looked peaceful." Her gentle teasing reminded me of Treize.

"Right. I think you want me to learn something from this."

"I'm not that naive, Milliardo."

She threaded her fingers together on her lap and fidgeted with the ring she wore on her left middle finger. A gift from her father, the last one she would receive from him. She hadn't grown much at all since fifteen, remaining steadfastly, endearingly petite. I wondered where she'd gotten it from, then remembered my mother's tiny sister.

"You should start writing it down," she said in a barely-controlled rush.

I dropped my hands and submitted myself to the inevitable, throbbing pain. "Write down what?"

"Anything. Everything. I've been thinking about what you said to me last night, that you couldn't remember what happened."

I did not stifle my groan. "I talked about that?"

"Yes. You don't have to be embarrassed. You didn't mention anything specific. You told me that it bothered you very much." She paused and her eyes flitted across my face, collecting, analyzing, and evaluating my reception to her. "Perhaps if you start writing, a journal - not even anything that formal - it might jog your memory. Then you can reread it, and you won't have to worry about forgetting, because you will always be able to look back on it and remember. Something special, something private, something meant only for you."

I turned away then, feeling blindsided by the knowledge of my own drunken forthrightness. I didn't want her to know what a fucking mess I was then, especially then. I didn't want her to know about anything having to do with Treize. She had her own mind about him, who he was, what he did, though I never asked her what that mind was.

"I don't want to forget." I listened to myself with disdain and disbelief. Even still, I couldn't stop myself. "I can't forget. Because if I did..."

"You might feel like it never happened at all?"

I put on what I thought might be my poker face and refused any further admissions. I realized then that I'd probably told her all about it, specifics included, in the midst of my semi-annual bender, even though she would continue to insist the contrary with unerring diplomacy.

She laid her small hand on my shoulder and leaned in to kiss my brow. "I understand. Consider my suggestion. Now, you should probably get showered and dressed. My mother will be here shortly, and then we can open presents."

xxxxxxxxxx

I always park at the back of the lot. I feel lazy sitting at a desk all day, even though I still run every morning and am not a kilogram heavier than I was at twenty - he healthy part of twenty, that is. On the way to the east entrance, I'm flanked by the Minister of Culture herself, a woman old enough to be my grandmother and sharp enough to convince everybody that she's benign. She greets me by linking her arm in mine and insisting that I attend an exhibit of newly-restored Afghan pottery and at the National Museum.

"I'll have Olena bring two tickets to your office. Be sure Doctor Aleandaris gets one, " she smoothly orders. "I enjoy his company. You're lucky to work with someone like him."

Soren will ask me to go with him, and I'm going to say no. No, sorry, Soren, I'm busy. With friends. From out of town. He'll be good-naturedly understanding of it, just as he was when I weaseled out of an invite to a Plonski reading two weeks ago. And like three weeks ago, when there was a Persian film festival that we had free tickets to. Friends. From out of town. "Wow," he'd remarked honestly, "you've really got some social life. Makes me seem like a hermit."

I am lucky to work with somebody like him. But it's work. He's my colleague. Before that, I was his student, and, for a brief intermission, I suppose we were friends, weren't we? And I suppose it wasn't entirely brief…

xxxxxxxxxx

"Why are you here?"

Excellent question, Mr. Aleandaris. I'd asked myself the same more times than I could recall.

"Why not?"

His hair is blonde. Dirty blonde. Messy dirty blonde. Charming messy dirty blonde.

"Come on. That's a terrible answer. And the wrong one, I suspect."

The man can call bullshit from a mile away, as he demonstrated daily in his European Literature class. He is especially adept at calling my bullshit. I wondered once if it was just me. Then I realized that it was just him.

"I like books. I want to have an academic discussion about them."

I wanted to get out of the house. I wanted to interact with other human beings. I wanted to feel like I was moving in some direction. Any direction. The university seemed neutral, a hub of mature, adult interactions. Enrolling in a class had been a frightening move culminating from a truthful assessment of my life situation. The diagnosis: Stuck. Again. Just like in Brussels. Stuck between the past and the future. Stuck between memories and plans. I had one of those cinematic "What would Treize want me to do?" moments. His answer: Do something, preferably something you love. If not that, something at least not self-destructive. Okay, Treize, I'll bite. Though how that had resulted in my standing in an empty lecture hall in the heat of Mr. Aleandaris' scrutiny wasn't entirely clear.

"Okay, fine. I like books, too. But why are you here? You have a degree, don't you?"

It's odd when everybody knows your biography. It's odder when your professor uses your own biography against you.

"I haven't taken a literature class before."

His eyes are green. Bright green. And on that particular day, they looked up at me through the type of rectangular thick-framed glasses that go in and out of fashion with the tides. They suit him. They wouldn't suit just anybody. It's his face. It's something about the shape of his face.

"I bet you've already read most of the books on the syllabus."

"Why would you say that?"

I felt a deep imbalance with him then. This feeling was part blow-back from his intensity, his crackling energy that moves like a static charge from him to everyone else. It cuts through sputtering, faulty logic like a knife. It breathes profound depth into the seemingly plainest of storylines and makes Dante's Inferno sound like a sexy place to go. It's sharp and dynamic. Intimidating.

"Your arguments for Fabrizio and Brutus have been very compelling, if incendiary. And whether you've read this stuff before or not, it's clear that your reasoning is far above your peers'. You should be in a graduate class."

"I'm not pursuing a degree."

His expression was cryptic. "Well, there's a bit more to my inquiry, actually."

I stared levelly. I could be cool with him, sub-zero, halt the reciprocating cycle of his current, gain some ground on him, if only a little. I wondered then why exactly I was trying so hard.

He perched on the corner of the table that he never sat at while teaching, too busy writing excitedly on the board or navigating the rows of the small lecture hall, pointing his dry-erase marker at people who gave him either excellent answers or terrible ones. Even recitations were conducted in a state of motion befitting the content, with a pleasing voice in the mid-tenor register that was filled to the point of saturation with infectious ardor.

"You make the other students uneasy. They don't want to argue with Milliardo Peacecraft. Or Zechs Merquise, for that matter. And those who do want to argue with you don't want to do so over literature. They need to feel free to speak up, because this stuff's hard enough for most of them. You're looking for an intelligent, lively discussion. They're looking to squeak by."

"I see."

And I did. When I spoke in class, there was rarely any follow-up except from Mr. Aleandaris. Whenever my arguments took full, forceful root, the girl I sat next to would grip the sides of her desk like she was about to be sucked out of it. I frightened her. How sick.

Mr. Aleandaris opened a beat-up leather briefcase and slid in a stack of unused handouts. He pulled at the crooked knot of his tie with fidgety irritation. It had been crooked the whole class, just as it had been the day before and the day before, as though he'd put it on as an afterthought – or had left it skewed on purpose.

"I'm not trying to kick you out of here," he stated.

"It sounds like that's exactly what you're doing."

He closed the two latches on his briefcase and looked up at me with a closed-mouth smile as crooked as his neckwear.

"Look, these kids don't know what they want to do with themselves. The overwhelming majority are here because it's a requirement. This is bread and butter. That's why I'm teaching it and not a professor."

"You're not a professor?"

He snorted back a laugh.

"No. I'm a graduate student." He hoisted his briefcase over his shoulder, elbow jutting in the air at my eye level. "You wanna talk books? You wanna move past Shakespeare and Hugo? Then you should come to my book group. It's not a group per se, just me and my colleague, Liese. She teaches two sections of this class. We get together every Thursday and talk Murakami, Camus, Bajek. She's interesting. You might like her." He paused, cocked his head, and grinned. "And that's assuming you can stomach me, now that I've probably completely offended you."

I adjusted the strap of my bag across my chest, pretending to be momentarily occupied with it as I processed his offer. "You want me to drop, though."

"Thursday, six o'clock at Athenos on Helgar and Bolio. Or stay. You can't do both, ethics and all. The decision is ultimately yours." Through the window of the door, he made a hand-waving 'move-it' gesture to the huddle of students gathered outside, waiting for their section to start. He grasped the handle and was about to turn it when he paused once more and looked back at me.

"And if you do show up on Thursday, you can call me Soren."

xxxxxxxxxx

As predicted, I arrive before Soren does. Out of my bag I pull the loaf of zucchini bread I promised him and set it on his desk. Our office is a converted library, and, as such, it is naturally well-lit and comfortable. The ministry had to do very little to accommodate Soren's project, as the room was already furnished and stocked with native Sancian literature. They simply added two large, antique desks, chairs, and a pair of laptops and called it a department.

I sit at my desk for a few minutes, gazing out the window that offers an unobstructed view of the bay. I am lucky. I'm doing something with my days, something productive, something important. But something bothers me still, picks at the back of my brain no matter where I am. Picks at my brain? Poor choice of words. It bludgeons me over the head.

I think it's Soren.

xxxxxxxxxx

Liese, whose birth name, I later learned, is Ye-Kyi, opened her mouth in a wide statement of incredulity. She flipped it into a broad, white smile and looked to the hanging light fixture above us, palms to the heavens in an plea for divine assistance, and then laid into me again.

"I don't think I'll ever convince you that Bajek is a realist! I can't believe that you don't see it!"

"I understand your point," I admitted, employing the rules of polite debate, "but I disagree completely. He doesn't write love as an abstraction. He writes it as an organic experience. He's about love. He's a romantic."

"_You're_ a romantic!" She clapped her hands together with an unselfconscious laugh that filled the entire second floor of the dimly-lit establishment. "This is what we needed, Soren! A romantic."

"I told you," Soren said from behind a cup of what must have been, at that point, cold coffee. He made a sour face and slid the mug towards the middle of the table where the rest of our used drink ware sat.

"You're fun!" Liese exclaimed, patting my arm. A row of thin, circular bracelets jangled on her thick wrist. Liese's pretty, dark-featured, part of the second generation of the Burmese immigrants that arrived eighty years before the occupation as a response to the Federation incursion in their homeland. The irony isn't at all amusing, even to me. "Has anybody ever told you?"

I blushed at that. Very faintly, but definitely. "Not quite like that, no."

"I hope you come back next week," she said to me. "I'm itching to dig into some de Espronceda. Then Soren and I will be the ones on the defense!" She collected a stack of papers she'd been marking bloody with a red pen when I'd arrived. "I've got to go." She waved the pile over her head and made an exasperated face. "Papers, papers! You have papers, too!" she exclaimed, thrusting them in Soren's direction.

"I'm hoping that I'll go home to find that somebody's broken into my apartment and graded them for me."

"Maybe they'll finish your dissertation, while they're at it."

His mouth fell open. "What dissertation?"

"I think the working title is something like 'Manifestations of Sancian Ethnic Tensions in Post-Occupation Literature.'" She beamed at him, then at me. "Good bye, good bye, gentlemen! Don't stay up too late!" she sang as she descended the staircase, still waving her papers overhead.

I nodded and wished her good luck. Soren waved from the elbow until she was completely out of sight, then he folded his hands on the table and lifted his blonde-brown brows until they disappeared under the disheveled mess of his bangs.

I stared at him for a few seconds. When he didn't say anything, didn't do anything but smile pleasantly back at me, I looked around the room. Athenos Coffee House has a theme: revolution. Its décor is a hodgepodge of ill-matched tables, chairs, couches, and bookshelves, many clearly used, most aesthetically ill-preserved. The windows are covered with a sort of coating, a murky grey color, like a permanent smoke stain. The lighting is low, but not uncomfortably so. It seems to be modeled after someone's vision of a underground revolutionary hideout, where sharp minds go to talk about forbidden politics, literature, and how to overthrow The Man. On the walls are pictures of various revolutionaries and revolutions, mostly photographs, some artistic depictions. It's not exactly warm, but it feels like everybody in the room is a part of something exclusive and secret. It's intimate. And at that moment, in the quiet between us and the din of other, livelier conversations, it felt a little too intimate for me.

"I should go."

His brows dropped again. "Really?"

"It seems that you have work to do," I explained, though he didn't appear to have brought any with him.

"What else is new?" He shrugged, sat back in his chair, and dug his chin into the high neck of his brown wool jumper. "This is my time. I bust my butt all week to have one night without work, so, if you need to go, by all means. But don't feel like you have to."

His expression was open, receptive, welcoming. Unobtrusively imploring. His eyes met mine without apprehension. I tried to remember how these things went – small talk, introductory conversations. I thought then that perhaps I should have taken greater advantage of those miserable Romefeller events.

"Are you from New Port?" I asked. Not bad. B-grade. Maybe.

"Nope, I'm a wild mountain hick. Kheval province."

Kheval. My fingers pressed into the worn arms of the velvet-upholstered, stuffed chair I sat in. Something like excitement tugged in my chest.

"That's where my mother's from."

"Yeah, she's pretty much the one thing we have to claim. You've been, right?"

"A long time ago."

"Oh, you have to go back this time of year. Beautiful. Of course, I counted down the days and minutes to my secondary graduation so I could get the hell out of there and come to the city, but I visit my mother once a month..."

xxxxxxxxxx

He arrives at 9:45. I hear him coming from down the hall. He has a certain step, firm, but clipped with a bounce, like he could effortlessly bound off in a wild sprint if necessity or whim should call for it. He greets me brightly when he walks in. I wonder why he still wears a wrinkled button-down shirt even though he's not teaching anymore. It's not that wrinkly. Just a little. He just doesn't care. I like that.

That's my problem, really. I like a lot about Soren. And I hate that fact.

"Oh my God!" he exclaims, holding up the loaf of bread he found on his desk. "You made this?"

I nod. He grins.

"I can't believe you baked this."

"What's so incredible about it?" I ask.

I hate that I'm drawn into everything he says.

He holds the bread in one hand and shakes his other open hand at it as if to say, 'This, this, this!'

"I could never do this."

I hate that he's so genuine.

"It's not hard," I say. "All you have to do is follow the directions."

I hate that I want to invite him to my house to bake zucchini bread.

"Well, sure, but it can't just come out this well every time. I mean…" he pauses and shakes his hand at it again, "this is Bora Hermano beautiful. This looks like something out of one of her books."

I hate that I find him absolutely adorable.

"You haven't even tried it yet," I warn. "You might hate it."

Like I hate the way I feel about you.

He sets the bread on his desk, opens the plastic bag, and pulls out the end piece.

"This is the best piece. I can tell." He's right. He takes a bite. He rolls his eyes back and makes an 'mmmm' sound. He chews with them closed for a few moments, and then says, "I think I encouraged you into the wrong line of work, my friend."

His eyes open, and there's something so familiar there. I don't like it.

In fact, I hate it.


	12. Eternal

Limbo 12/12: Eternal

This isn't a new chapter. I've simply split the first version of chapter 11 into two more digestible parts. Sorry to any who've received alerts in their boxes!

See notes and warnings from Limbo 11. This is a direct continuation of the last chapter, and it begins in the past. (But you're smart people and probably could have figured that out for yourselves!)

xxxxxxxxxx

It was another late night at Athenos. Liese had already left, claiming homework corrections and an upcoming exam, leaving Soren and me to talk. It was our fifth group meeting, and we'd just finished a heated discussion about whether or not Franz Kafka was an existentialist. The week prior, Soren had loaded me up with scholarly analyses of the movement so that I'd be up to speed, so by the start of the evening, I felt without doubt that Kafka was indeed an existentialist. Liese backed me. Soren vehemently denied it. I don't think he necessarily agreed with his own stance, but rather had assumed the opposing argument for the sake of keeping our meeting from turning into a boring sequence of affirming statements. "What," he'd said, "is the fun of that? Might as well form a Kafka fan club and beat off all over his picture." I'd been surprised and unexpectedly amused by his comment. It was the first time I'd laughed in, wow, almost forever.

"You're not intimidated by me," I said. "You and Liese."

Soren leaned forward and rested his chin in his hand, eyelashes fluttering in confusion over my statement. "Why would we be intimidated by you?"

"I can think of a few reasons." I slouched back and crossed my arms over my chest. "I tend to make people feel uncomfortable. Most do a decent job of tucking it back, but I can see it. It's more of a feeling, really."

"Okay," he replied, slapping his palms down on the table, "you wanna know why Liese and some others and I don't seem to have a problem?" His eyes tracked up to the right as he organized his thoughts, then fixated straight on me. Without the buffer of his glasses, his stare is penetrating and pinning, like a toxic paralytic. "So, okay, there are two types of people in Sanc today - this is the big sociological brouhaha right now. The ethnic stuff? North and South? That's old news. The split now is between the people who stayed and the people who fled."

The people who fled. That included me, didn't it? Though I hadn't wittingly, intentionally fled, I'd stayed fled even when the opportunity to return had arisen. I shifted uneasily. This was not the topic I wanted to discuss. It was something I hadn't forged peace with, something I'd stowed away for convenience ever since talking about it with Treize in India. I told myself that I'd get to it during one session or another of psychological housekeeping, but I wasn't ever good at keeping those sorts of promises to myself.

"Do you have any idea how many people left after the invasion? More than half of the population of New Port. A fourth of the rest of the population. Gone." The fingers of his left hand touched together and then blossomed into a wide five. "Sweden, Norway, Denmark, Germany, Russia, Great Britain, France, Morocco, Poland, America, Canada, Belgium, they all raised their quotas that year. Quietly, of course, so that the Feds didn't get all in a tizzy. That's a lot of people, you know?"

As he spoke, Soren's hands lent visuals footnotes to his words, pointing, wagging, clenching and fanning. He was effusing. Alight. Brimming. I nodded at his interrogatory inflection, which seemed to recharge him and send him blazing to his next point.

"I bet that over half of my freshmen weren't even born in Sanc. They were born somewhere else. And their parents bottle-fed them stories about the good old days, what a country, Sanc, we'll go back when the occupation's over. And then, when these people moved back, their kids are repatriated, they find the place is a..." His lips pressed together and his gesticulation suspended for a few heartbeats. "A… bleeding mess. The parents are disappointed, but they don't want to admit it. The Sanc of their childhoods doesn't exist anymore, ripped out from under them in their absence, and they can't move past it. Those are the people who'll give you funny looks. Because they're disillusioned. Detached. They don't know how to process it. It's like a glitch that keeps catching for them. Sanc. The war. You. The ESUN. The Mariemeia thing. They're still working it out." He pointed in a discreet circle around the room. "That's most people in the world, probably. Dull-eyed, dazed."

I nodded again, feeling not unlike the description he left his latest point with. I hadn't thought about them, the ones who'd left with such grand notions of return, only to find their once-pristine homeland battle-scarred and jaded. Coming home to the half-razed mess of the Federation and Romefeller incursions must have been devastating. Those people had wanted nothing more than to lay low until the Federation collapsed, and when the world continued to burn even after the Federation's dissolution, I can only imagine the compounding of their disbelief.

"And _then_," Soren said with dramatic stress, "there are those of us who stayed, either by choice or by force, a different kind of animal totally. Liese? Her family was in the city the whole time. She saw some shit, excuse me, that you wouldn't believe." He shrugged. "Or maybe you would." (I would.) "My father was hauled off after a patrol found that we were aiding refugees, sheltering them while they moved from house to house towards the border. Even after he was taken away, though, my mother still kept doing it - because who would suspect that somebody would be so stupid, right?"

"I'm sorry about your father," I managed, though it was admittedly an automatic expression.

He waved me off. "He got out, eventually. He's living in, what, Tunisia? Yeah, Tunisia. Anyway, we had this shed in the back, big storage shed, and one evening – I was seven, I think – my mother handed me a basket of bread and preserves and said, 'Take this to the shed, honey,' and I said, 'You want me to throw all this in the garbage?' and she rolled her eyes and said, 'Just take it out, already!' So I did, and when I opened the shed, there were eight people in there, huddled together because it was freezing, a whole family, hanging out in our shed, right next to the garbage can." He shook his head. "It was unreal."

"Your mother was courageous."

Soren smirked as he held his palms out and raised and lowered them like an unbalanced scale. "Courageous, stupid, let's call it both. Remember the March 195 riots?"

"Yes."

I'd watched them with Treize when I was supposed to have been having a good time. They'd ruined my evening. And the next day. And several days after. They'd haunted me periodically over the years, dropping into my consciousness usually as part of an untidy package of past events that fueled lonely, sleepless nights of recrimination and self-loathing.

"You see this picture?" He pointed to a framed magazine cover over his head. "Look carefully."

It was a head-on photograph of a mob of people, hot with passion, most of whom wore bandanas over the lower halves of their faces to fend off the CS gas and conceal their identities. The photo centered on the two people at the front of the crowd, a male and a female, their right fists in the air, brows furrowed in righteous indignation. The male, very young, had blood running down the left side of his face from a cut on his forehead. The crowd behind them was electric with anger, something that could be felt even through the two-dimensional medium of a photograph. It lived and breathed, reached out and smacked. It was no wonder that the picture had won the Di Fusco prize for journalism.

I looked carefully, searching for a small detail in a throng, and all at once it hit me, those bright green eyes, red and puffy from irritation, right in front of my face. Right up front. They were so obvious to me then that I wondered how I'd ever missed them. When I looked back at Soren, he was holding up his bangs, revealing the wound that had move millions, a small scar that, like most head injuries, had bled like a cut twice its size. He held his index finger in front of his lips, which were pursed, as in 'Shh, don't tell anybody that I'm secretly a Sancian icon.'

I felt my mouth open, but I controlled it before it became an idiotic gape. I bit down on the inside of my lower lip as if to keep it from happening again.

"It's incredible how many people I meet who say that they recognize me, but they don't know from where. I usually shrug and say something stupid or cute. But these people," he emphasized, pointing again to the picture above, this time with both hands, "we are the people who stayed. We've seen everything. We've done everything. We've justified everything. We have no right to condemn someone like you, only doing what you thought was right, what you thought needed to be done."

He must have seen the doubt in my face, because he slid up to the front of his chair and curled his fingers around the circular edge of the coffee table that separated us.

"You think the resistance didn't kill some soldiers? Sure they did. Maybe not intentionally, but maybe it was intentional. We know what it's like to be driven to the edge. We are deeply connected to everything that has happened since the Feds landed, not just in Sanc, but in the entire world sphere. We get the war on a level that most don't, if you believe that there's anything to get. And we relate to you, even if you won't let yourself relate to us."

He reigned himself back then, folded his legs up on the chair and sat cross-legged. He's small. Smaller than me, a little smaller than Treize, and compact, spring-loaded as though at any moment he could fly across the room and rouse some unsuspecting sleepy student into a state of academic mania by way of osmotic energy transfer.

His next words were uttered pointedly, slowly, with clear, explicit intonation and word choice.

"What you did? What we did? It's the same. We're the same."

There was a long pause while he awaited my reaction with straight, unflinching face. When I stayed quiet, chewing my lip in earnest, and not because I wanted to, the corners of his mouth curved into a small smile.

"You look weirded out. You don't believe me."

"I think the comparison's a stretch," I muttered at last.

"Think what you want. But honestly think about it, at the very least."

xxxxxxxxxx

Why do I hate these things?

I tilt my head to the side discretely and look past the monitor of my laptop. Across the room, Soren is typing furiously. His face is serious in his concentration. With his glasses, he looks very, very serious. Like Treize. God damn myself, why can't I stop doing that? Soren and Treize are nothing alike. Treize was obsessive. Soren is… also obsessive. Stop it. This will not be a line-by-line comparison. Just fucking stop it. Don't even go there. There's no comparison. No reason for it.

I turn back to the biography I'm working on for Jenn Polaria. Poet. Born in AC 101, New Port City. The daughter of educators, Polaria… met a nice boy, and she wasn't at all afraid to let herself feel things for him. Things. Why can't I just say it? Because I hate this topic. I wish it would just go away.

I go back to staring at him.

Soren would argue that Treize was a realist. Treize would argue himself a romantic. I think Soren would be closer to correct, even despite Treize's inclinations towards blanket expressions of love for broad concepts like 'human nature' and 'spirit.' Soren would also say he was a deluded megalomaniac for believing that his death was the inevitable event that would change history – which, conversely, could be argued as a romantic notion. Treize would say that Soren is hard, lacking faith in people and in the rise of good above all other elements. Though, to Soren's credit and the credit of all Sancians who stayed through the occupation, the Federation never gave anybody here a reason to have a surplus of faith in anything but the pervading might of irony.

He suddenly stops typing. He glances up. Catches me. His expression softens, lightens. He always seems happy to see me. He's not that way with everybody. I've watched. I watch him. Like this. I turn back to my work and pretend that I'm not infatuated.

xxxxxxxxxx

"Thanks for coming tonight, even though Soren's out of commission, poor thing."

It was late spring. Chilly at night, mild in the day. My favorite time of year. My plants were going crazy in my garden, and I was feeling – I almost couldn't believe it – optimistic. I think it was the air. The lilies. The baby rabbits that I wanted to dislike for trying to murder my vegetables but couldn't because they were fuzzy and small.

"You said he had a headache?"

"Migraine. He completely shuts down. No noise, no light, no interaction, no nothing. They don't happen often, but when they do, they're debilitating. I don't even offer to bring him anything anymore, 'cause he's pretty well useless even to figure out if he needs something."

Despite the late hour, the streets of the art district were bustling. A few people stared at me when they walked by, a few others awkwardly averted their gazes. Most didn't care because most were young, self-absorbed, self-labeled liberals and progressives, people unconcerned by that old hat, Milliardo Peacecraft or whatever the hell he wanted to call himself. Please. That's so 195.

"Is he part Swede?" I asked.

"Why?" She silently retracted her question by touching her hand to my shoulder in acknowledgment. "The name, right? His father was a professor up north. Philosophy. He, as Soren put it to me once, 'had a hard-on for Kierkegaard, the most miserable, nit-witted philosopher in the last three hundred years.'" She laughed again. It was clearer in that moment more than most that she adored him. "He's Sancian, though. Old, old Sancian. Before Sanc was Sanc Sancian."

"I don't come here for him," I blurted out, realizing immediately that I'd just lied. The fact that it was a lie scared the hell out of me until I justified it by telling myself that Soren was my friend and that friends enjoy spending time together. There was nothing wrong with having a friend. Nothing wrong with wanting to see that friend. I wondered when I'd gotten so paranoid about friendship, and in a shadowy corner of my mind, I thought about Treize.

"Of course not," she placated. "You seem to get on well, is all."

"I suppose."

"He lives up there." Liese pointed a short, ringed finger up at a tall apartment building to our left. "5F. That corner unit. You can see the window's blacked out. The building has no elevator. Can you picture him dragging his bicycle up all those stairs?" She laughed again. "He's nuts."

I gazed up as we walked by, imagined Soren in there, hands clenched to his head, probably wishing he were dead at the moment. I felt bad for him. "This is an expensive neighborhood."

"He spends most of his graduate stipend on his studio. I tease him about eating nothing but nasty nutrition bars, but that's how he saves money. 'Keeps you alive,' he says. What it also does is keep him skinny."

I shrugged one shoulder. It was practical. He had priorities, he sacrificed for them. I didn't know what else she expected him to do.

"He's brilliant, you know." Her voice dropped to a serious register, her instructor's tone that was years away from the twittering jingle of her twenty-something vernacular. "He really is. He's only 22 and already defending his dissertation later this month. He's been published more times than his advisor, which, as you can imagine, fuels some ire between them. The university wants him to stay on. Cambridge wants him, so does Berlin, Yale, Preventers Academy, of all places, and I can't even remember where else. They've been soliciting him for the past two years."

"Hm." I played coolly through my surprise and wondered offhandedly why she was being so sober about it, why she was telling me at all, as though it made any difference, as though I would like him more for being a genius. Though I've always been drawn to their company…

She sighed dreamily and once more donned her crown of buoyant twinkling. "But his heart is in Sanc. He won't move anywhere else. He's got it bad for this place, no matter what happens…"

xxxxxxxxxx

Why do I hate these things?

Soren stands, closes his laptop, makes a soft sound in the back of his throat as he stretches. He rakes his hand through his hair, and it sticks up oddly for a minute until gravity pulls it slowly back down over his forehead. He's put in a seven hour day, which may not seem a great deal, but the man works with the most precisely calibrated economy.

He holds in his left hand a thin envelope containing tickets to the Afghan pottery exhibit. He smacks it lightly against his opposite palm. He glances over at me. He's going to ask me to go with him. He's going to ask me, and I'm going to tell him no.

No, not even that. I want this to stop. The solicitations. The wishful looks. Why do I hate these things? Because if I didn't, that would mean… what? What would that mean? Whatever it would mean, I'm certain that it's not good. How convoluted can I make this?

It's a feeling. There's no reasoning that can tear through the bullshit on this one. My feelings for him feel like betrayal. They feel like something I shouldn't have. Why wasn't it this way with Noin? Maybe because I knew from the start that it wouldn't last with her, if only because of a deep commitment to Project Mars that I did not share. But this… Soren… This is too much for me.

I am going to make this stop. Right now.

xxxxxxxxxx

I looked at my watch. 17:30. I was alone at a table for three, waiting. Drinkless. Waiting for Soren, who had messaged me and asked me to meet him early. He was late. I would have been irritated if not for his cross-city bicycle commute from the campus to Athenos. I'd spent the day in my yard, digging around, fussing pointlessly with an already well-managed garden. It'd seemed too beautiful to be inside, though I hadn't felt much like doing anything at all. That was most days. Slow, directionless, repetitive. Discontent, but not urgently so. Despairing, but very, very quietly. Where had spring's optimism gone off to? Blown away with the June breeze, maybe. Flimsy thing, optimism.

At 17:34, he bounded up the stairs, two at a time, stopped at the landing, smiled when he spotted me, and slid into the chair next to me. He held up a stapled packet of papers in his hand and shook them in the air. A bead of sweat trickled down from his right sideburn.

"I got it," he stated.

"Got what?"

He exhaled sharply as if frustrated with his inability to catch his breath. "Last year I applied for a post-doctorate grant from the Ministry of Culture. Wrote this hundred-page proposal, submitted a dozen recommendations, the whole shebang." He waved his papers again and paused, looking at me, the curve of his mouth asymmetrical, his eyes keen. "They gave it to me. One of two. They…" Soren covered his mouth with his fingers as he scanned over the cover sheet of the packet. "I can't believe they actually did."

I leaned closer to him, trying to get a peek at what he was holding. He smelled good. "What is it? Your proposal."

He flattened the papers down on the table. "I proposed the development of a national literary database for Sancian authors and literature. An official record of authorship, timelines, movements, you know, everything. For academics and the general public."

"Congratulations," I offered sincerely. There was very little that was perfunctory between us at that point. He'd made it clear that he'd rather me be in a foul, spitting grump, if that's how I felt, rather than sporting a veneer of pleasantry – like I was ever good at those. "It seems somewhat odd that they didn't have anything like that before."

"They have their priorities up their what's-its. Something to do with trying to rebuild the country. I dunno. They're giving me a budget for myself and one other researcher. And if, after the two-year trial, they like what they see, they might allot for more."

I absently ran my thumb up one thick corner of the packet a few times before catching myself. "You don't want to teach?"

His immediate reply was a hard, sarcastic laugh. "Oh, hell no. No, no. I know, ridiculous, isn't it? Why get a PhD in literature if you don't want to teach, right? No, this," he said, referring to the paper between us with the pat of his hand, "this is what I want to do."

He has the slim, delicate hands of a pianist, smooth, the kind that have never been calloused from gripping mobile suit thrusters, the kind that can write wickedly intelligent dissertations and well-crafted proposals for desperately needed cultural revitalization projects. They're unlike any hands I've ever known.

"This is important," he continued. "More important than telling eighteen-year-olds how to decipher simile from metaphor. Plus, my advisor keeps telling me I have to straighten out if I want to teach. You know." He paused and pulled on his wrinkled button-down shirt and ruffled his adolescently careless hair. "Grow up."

"I thought it was professorial to sever relations with one's iron," I deadpanned.

"You'd think, with all the tenured slobs at that school."

In the back of the room, a man rose from his chair and packed up his things to leave. I only noticed because he looked incredible. Tall. Striking. Thick, black hair, steely grey eyes. Stuck in that exotic place between handsome and beautiful. As he approached us on the way to the stairway, his eyes targeted on Soren. Glared. The pleasing lines of his face contorted into an ugly sneer as he passed, which Soren caught and responded to with a 10,000 kilowatt grin that made him look approximately ten years old.

"Good Christ," Soren mumbled as the man descended the stairs.

I tried not to appear too interested in the interaction I'd just witnessed, but it wasn't every day that somebody sneered at Soren. Sneered! "What's that guy's problem?"

"Just me."

"What, did you tell him that his favorite writer was a hack?"

Soren's laugh was a pinch on the edgy side. "You took it much better than he did! But no." He shook his head. "No, it's a bit more complicated than that."

There was a long pause during which he did not seem to be thinking of what next to tell me. "That's it?" I complained. "You're really going to leave it at 'No, it's a bit more complicated than that'? And you said my answers were terrible."

He puffed out his left cheek and thwacked his finger against it for a few moments before continuing. "You know the adage about opposites attracting? Well, that's pretty much all they do."

"Ah."

Oh. Shit. was my real sentiment. As in, 'Oh, shit… what?' What? Why was it even an issue? It wasn't. It was nothing. It was smaller than nothing. It was a negative inversion of nothing to me.

"The man is inclined to dramatics. Extreme dramatics. Tantrums. Preposterous threats. 'I'm going to kill myself if you don't put your shirts in the hamper!' That kind of bullshit." His posture righted and he held his palms out to me in a gesture of self-defense. "I'm not a slob. I'm not. The floor was not littered with clothes. I'm talking about one shirt draped over a chair. One shirt. 'This is why you look like a vagrant! Why don't you hang your things where they belong?!'"

" 'Vagrant' is a bit harsh," I noted, thoroughly distracted by the revelation that Soren had been in an intimate relationship with a man. A very attractive man. A very attractive man with whom he'd been so serious that they'd lived together. Argued. Vacationed. Screwed…

"Oh, I know." He scoffed and rolled his eyes. "See, I can't get upset about that stuff. I don't get upset about much at all, actually. It's not worth it." He pantomimed holding something to his eye. "Everything passes through the lens of the occupation for me. I mean it. If people aren't banging on my door, Gestapo-style, then I'm not stressing, I'm not freaking, I'm not stirring shit. Life's too short. My favorite cliché." He stopped himself with a self-effacing smile. "I'm sure you don't care about any of this."

Wrong. "It's fine."

"So," he redirected, "what, exactly, do you do?"

"What do you mean?"

"With your free time. Do you work?"

"Not anymore, no." It wasn't a fact I was at all pleased with. I'd always worked, ever since I entered the academy at eleven. "I resigned from the Preventers last year."

"Why?"

"I wanted to be here."

"The branch office is ten blocks that way." He pointed over his shoulder, to the south. "So, really. Why?"

There was no pause for consideration. "I was sick of preventing. Sick of looking at all the ugly. Sick of the same people. Sick of the attachments. I'm done with it."

Sick of the reminders. Sick of the Gundam pilots. Sick of Treize's former adjunct. Sick of the fuck-up I'd made with Noin. The only think I hadn't been sick of was the state of constant busyness the job thrust me into. Without that, I didn't exactly know what to do with myself.

"Okay, you don't work, so what do you do all day?"

"Read. Write. Think." Very exciting, Zechs. "That's about it. And I have a garden." Oh, and a garden! How fascinating!

In spite of my self-criticisms, Soren's face had brightened considerably as I scrolled through the sum of my existence. "What do you write?"

"It's personal."

"All right." His fingers tapped a quick rhythm on the table, and he seemed on the edge of saying something for quite some time before it finally came out.

"Do you want to work for me?"

It was my turn to pause. I didn't tap. I held my breath.

"Work for you."

"That second position. Research. I think you'd be good for it."

I folded my arms over my stomach. "I'm hardly qualified."

"Qualified?" His eyes focused confrontationally. "I'm hiring. I choose the qualifications. I'm not looking for an expert literary analyst. If I wanted that, I'd ask Liese."

"If you're not looking for somebody who knows literature, then what are you looking for?" I asked, trying to phrase it in a way that highlighted the inherent illogicality of his offer.

"I'm looking for somebody who gets it, who… would slit their wrists for this place. This country. This stuff," he said, snatching the papers off of the table and shaking them in my face, "Sanc's literature, this stuff is just as important, if not more so, than the national historical archives. This is the blood and guts of Sanc. This is the real people's history of everything. This." He looked at the iron-grip he had on his proposal, and he seemed to conclude in that moment that he'd extended his fervor a bit too far. He put the papers back down and laid his hands on his lap. "Very few people understand this."

"And you think I do."

"You're telling me you don't?" Like a pendulum's swing, he was back in the arms of whatever muse drove his passions. "You? The romantic? Come on, Mika, this is exactly you."

My jaw clenched, and I was suddenly on some unwelcome defensive. "What did you just call me?"

Rhetorical question, of course. What he'd just called me was a very familiar Sancian diminutive that not even my parents had used for me. Only Relena ever had, as an infant, and only because my name is an unreasonable mouthful.

Soren's face flushed with embarrassment, though, true to form, he didn't back down or look away. "Sorry. It just flew out."

I didn't stay angry, if anger was even the right name for the emotion. I think the real feeling was more closely related to gob-smacked shock. "No, it's all right. It's just that nobody calls me that. Ever."

"I have a lazy tongue, if you can't tell."

"I know. I read your publications. Your writing is menacingly eloquent. I had to get out a dictionary."

"Whatever," he dismissed. "Do you want the job or not? I want you for it."

Did I want to do something besides mope around my house? Did I want to work on a project that was vitally important to reviving the cultural spirit of my homeland? Did I want to work with the ever-fascinating, bullshit-calling, intellectually-stimulating, remarkably-easy-to-get-along-with Soren Aleandaris?

"Yes."

"I have to warn you, though. The pay is shit."

"It's not an issue."

"I figured." There was a touch of uncertainty on the corner of his lips that I hoped wasn't a factor of regret over the job offer. "So, you'll really do it?"

"I said yes, didn't I?"

"Good." He smiled widely then, all traces of doubt absent as though they'd never been there. "Great. And 'menacingly eloquent'? You realize that that itself is menacingly eloquent."

I shrugged with a smirk. "Whatever."

xxxxxxxxxx

I'm going to stop this. I'm going to do the most self-defeating thing I've done since letting myself become addicted to Tetracontin. Why am I doing this? I ask this even as I plot how best to sour the potential that exists between us. I wonder how I should do it. I could be blunt and ruin our working relationship, too, but that would be unwise. I do enjoy my job, and I would like to keep doing it, please. I could be subtle. I really can be subtle, despite what some might be inclined to believe, and Soren's clever enough to catch it, but I need to be clear. Clear. I want this to stop, Soren. Stop asking me to spend time with you. Why? Because I desperately want to take you up on all your offers, and more, and I can't handle that.

There has to be a measure of tact in the delivery. Something that says, "Thanks, truly, but no thanks," something that…

I'm thinking like Treize. Did he think this way when dealing with me? How to temper his words? How to choose the correct intonation? Or was he such an expert at manipulation that these factors converged effortlessly?

I'm going to shoot from the hip with this one. Anything. Just say it. Get it over with. He's about to open his mouth. Do it. Do it now.

"Do you think I owe you something?" I ask, relieved that I didn't blurt out something along the lines of 'I had a raunchy dream about you last week, and now I really, really want to fuck you, among many other things, and I can't stop thinking about it, and I want to know all about you, I want to kiss you every time you walk up to my desk, and I want to tell you about my life, everything, because I think you'll get it, even though I thought there was only one other person in the world capable of understanding,' et cetera, et cetera.

He cocks his head to the side and pouts out his lower lip. "What do you mean?"

"You get me a job here. Then you start asking me to do things with you. Do you think it's because I owe you a favor?" Oh, this is interesting. From what twisted part of my mind did I pull this?

"Wha-? No!" He looks appalled. He touches the envelope to his chest, over his heart. "That's not it at all. What kind of person do you think I am?" When I don't answer immediately, he shakes his head at me, his eyebrows drawn together as he no doubt wonders where exactly this came from. "What a weird thing to think."

"Is it?" Just keep going.

"Yes! God," he exclaims as the implication of my comment sinks in. He lifts the fingers of his right hand to his temple momentarily before planting them on his hip. "You think I got you a job in exchange for something? Honestly, what kind of person does that in real life? I'm not some Mafioso or whoever the hell else does things like that."

I knew this would feel horrible…

"I can't believe you would even say that," he concludes quietly.

…and I should have known that it would be a hundred times worse than my worst expectations.

"You're protesting too much," I throw in, because why not?

"You know what, Hamlet, this conversation is bullshit." He yanks his bag from where it's slung over his chair and throws it over his shoulder and across his torso. "I'm not going to argue the validity of your absurd notions of human dynamics."

"Are you trying to get me to go on a date with me?" On this point, I'm genuinely curious, even though I already know.

"No," he says with a dark laugh, "not anymore. Don't worry."

"Really?" Do I have to sound so disappointed?

"Really. I'm going home. You've already worn me out, and we haven't even left work yet."

In a silence pregnant with innuendo, he crosses the room and sets the tickets for the pottery exhibit on my desk.

"You should take your friend from out of town." He looks tired, even though he's smiling now. Tired of me, probably. Treize got that look sometimes. Now I know why. I truly do deserve it.

I keep my eyes directed but unfocused on Jenn Polaria's face. I don't say anything. I hope, at least, that I appear mildly hurt, because I certainly feel that way.

He knocks once on the corner of my desk and turns to leave. "I'll see you tomorrow." At the door, he pauses and says over his shoulder, "Thanks again for the bread."

When he's gone, I wait ten or so emotionless minutes until I figure he's gone downstairs, unchained his bicycle from the rack out front, the only one ever there, and started on his way back to his apartment. Then I rise, grab my things, and take a convoluted series of turns down certain hallways and stairways that will get me to the exit without encountering anybody.

The ride out of the city goes by unnoticed. When I press my heel to the kickstand of my motorcycle, it occurs to me that I have no idea how I even got home. It doesn't matter. I'm here. Like always, I feel a distant sense of gratitude when I discover that that nobody's thrown a rock through one of my windows.

I let my things drop to the floor as I walk inside, slip out of my shoes, and, I don't know why, but I head straight to the kitchen. Am I hungry? No. Am I thirsty? No, unless it's for something hard and inebriating, which I don't dabble with anymore due to a series of unmentionable pratfalls in the past year-and-a-half.

I stop in front of the refrigerator, a man-sized wall of history. My history. A record of my life. A noticeably skewed record, conspicuously missing, oh, the first twenty years. Why? I know why, but I don't say it. I try not to even think it, because every time I do, I feel like I'm sliding backwards - not even treading water, but rather getting sucked into the fatal mouth of a riptide. Pictures and pictures. Places I've enjoyed. People I love. And yet, there's one very important face missing.

I lean against the counter and let my knees become jelly. I sink to the floor. The refrigerator towers over me now. I don't look at this part very often. Thailand. Peru. The lounge of my sister's palatial, government-mandated home in Brussels. A tree. Presents. A couple are for me from her. A couple are for her from me. There's some for her mother, a couple for Pagan, who still folds himself subtly into many aspects of Relena's life. Christmas. This started with Christmas, didn't it? Everything. This descent. This mourning. This chapter of my life. I stretch my foot out and touch Seoul Olympic Stadium with my big toe. I tilt it, tilt it, until it's canted all wrong and about to fall off. Below it, I find Treize.

I lied to him when I said I wanted a picture of him in front of that fertility statue in Rishikesh. The truth is that I wanted a photo only of him looking anything but collected. He doesn't look embarrassed, but he doesn't bear much resemblance to the soldier too worldly for the color on his cheeks. He looks young, twenty-three years young, and the look he's giving me is one of… what? It's something I can't place. Or maybe I can. It's the look Soren gave me today after taking a bite of my zucchini bread. Even forging this comparison, the title of the look is unclear to me.

What is it?

xxxxxxxxxx

"Is this what you wanted?" Treize asked against my mouth.

"Yes. Why were you being like that?"

He locked his elbows so that he was hovering over me. "I suppose I was trying… I wanted to see what it would be like. If we stopped doing this."

"Why?" I didn't frown.

"It would be much easier, wouldn't it?"

Of course it would have been. The vast bulk of our complications came from our physical attraction to each other. That was the part that could get us demoted. That was the part that made being away exponentially more difficult. That was the part that had me coiled up and seething earlier that night. He wanted to see what it would be like to undo Us.

"So, how was it for you?" I asked.

He lowered himself back down, holding some of his weight on his forearms, the rest bearing comfortably on me.

"It didn't help that you were the sole topic of conversation, but even out there, dancing with a perfectly beautiful young woman, talking with her about her studies, her vacation to Barbados, all I could think was…"

"What?"

His gaze passed thoughtfully over my face as he considered it. "That you were watching me, burning with jealousy, getting drunk to cope… That your tuxedo fit you so well, that you looked cool and dangerous with your aviators instead of that damn mask." His eyes narrowed. "Sexy. That we were coming home tonight, that I would get to be like this with you…" He paused, took a breath, and brushed his lips against my cheek. "And I hated myself for having so little self-control that I couldn't even fake it for one evening. But that is how it is. With you."

I kissed him. I was satisfied with that.

His hips pressed down against mine. We were still more dressed than not, which was fine with me. I didn't want sex - at least, not right in that moment. Not ten minutes into the future, he'd be on his knees, my legs wrapped around him, both of us naked, balancing for a long moment on that lip-biting brink between sex and not sex, but right then I wanted something different. Something more. I wanted to be closer than that. I wanted to feel his body on mine, his hands on me, unclouded by the feral, a genuine expression. Why? I still couldn't break through the why of it.

Our lips parted. I held his head between my hands, kissed his jaw, looked past his left ear and up at the sky. "You're missing the shower." I whispered. "The stars… they're amazing."

"I will tell you about stars, Milliardo." He pushed himself lower, down my body, nuzzling my neck, licking at my throat. "Would you like to know?"

"Yes…" I pulled on the cotton fabric at the small of his back, untucking his shirt, and touched his bare skin. He was warm. Treize was always so warm.

"You are made from the same stuff as them." I felt his fingers pass lightly over my nipple, down my chest. He slowly unbuttoned the few remaining buttons of my dress shirt. "As am I."

I sighed and arched against him as dozens of meteoroids burned off in the atmosphere, bleeding brilliance from the friction, leaving behind trails of pure light.

"We are elements from a massive nuclear furnace, strung together so fantastically." His mouth was on my collar, sucking, nipping, his breath hot. His fingers dipped into my tuxedo trousers, through the fly that I'd left open earlier.

"Treize…"

"Nothing created, nothing destroyed. Only different. Why do we feel loss for what is gone when everything is…"

He paused and lifted his head. He removed his hand from my pants and shifted, directly over me as he'd been before, face to face with me, smiling softly, eyes bright and searching mine. I pulled him close, wrapped my arms tightly around him. He pressed his face into the crook of my neck and reached up to cup my cheek. When he spoke, I could hear the smile still in his voice.

"You and I… we are eternal."

xxxxxxxxxx

I love you, Treize. I always will. There will never be anyone who matches you, and nobody can ever take your place.

And that's okay.

That's okay.

It's okay.

It's okay.

I've heard of people having divine revelations. A part in the clouds, ethereal light shining down in thick beams, a voice, comfort. Purpose imbued. Batteries recharged. The world forever different. I'm not inclined towards divinity, but in this moment, sitting on my kitchen floor, staring at a picture of the only person I ever thought I'd be in love with, the relief that washes over me feels like some holy ablution.

It's okay.

I fold my legs in, push myself into a crouch, and extract Treize's picture from its position in the matrix. I stand, grab a spare magnet from the side of the fridge, and affix the photo at eye level. I don't try to squeeze it in somewhere. I don't show any mercy for Piazza San Marco as I bury it beneath something far more important, and I know that Relena will eventually get used to his close proximity. I put him where he should have been from the start. Where I can see him. Where I can look at his face every day and remember what he meant. The one. The one that got away. The one that's become something different, something eternal.

"This is okay, isn't it?" I ask him.

Of course I get no answer, but I know what it would be.

I touch his cheek with my fingertip. A small part of me feels like crying, an automatic response that isn't uncommon when I think about Treize and very rarely culminates in tears. But I don't have time to linger. I let my hand fall back to my side and leave the kitchen, my modern kitchen with my dark, marble countertops. I walk back to the foyer and slip my shoes back on. When I open the door, the pitch black of night hits me like a wall, and I wonder how long I was sitting, blanked-out, reminiscing. It doesn't matter. I check my watch. 21:24. Not too late by a long shot.

My drive to the city is preternaturally clear. And I feel pretty good about myself until I hit the city proper, when I realize that I'll be in the art district in approximately three and a half minutes. I'm nervous all of a sudden, and mutant Chernobyl butterflies are hacking at the lining of my stomach when I pull into a parking spot that seems too good to be coincidental, right smack in front of Soren's apartment building. I pull up on the parking brake, crane my neck, and see his unit lit up. I remember what Liese said. Corner unit 5F. Can you imagine him carrying his bike up five flights of stairs? Yes, Liese, I can, because Soren's like that. He wouldn't be Soren without such trivia.

There's a call box at the front door. I scroll down to 'Aleandaris, S' and stare at it. For a heart-stopping moment, I consider turning around and leaving - leaving the city, leaving Sanc, leaving Earth, getting a job on an anonymous freighter that will take me as far from this doorway as the limitations of human technology will allow. But it's only a moment of cowardice, and I recover. I press it. The buzzing noise is weak, sleepy-sounding, and as I wait, I wonder if it even works until…

"Yes?"

"It's Milliardo," I say, and as soon as I say it, I wish I'd added something like 'May I come in?' or 'I'd like to talk to you.'

The pause seems to extend for an hour and finally ceases with "Come on up."

The building is old, historical, crammed with studios and one-bedroom flats. Like most of the surviving high rises in the art district, it's a haven for supported students, moderately successful writers and artists, and a random assortment of nuclear families and aging bohemian types. It's maintained to the point of functionality but never to the point of true renovation. I climb four flights of creaking stairs, narrow stairs in claustrophobically narrow stairways that really would be a whoreson bitch to drag a bicycle up. On the fifth floor, I take a lucky left and find his unit at the end of the hall. Standing at his door, I clench both hands into fists and release them with a long exhalation. I knock and then, suddenly, he's right there.

"Hello," he says suspiciously. He's not wearing his glasses.

"I want to talk to you." I'm surprised when my voice resounds with calm and confidence.

"I have a phone, you know," he remarks, leaning against the doorjamb. "You could have called."

"I wanted to talk to you in person."

"Okay."

He turns abruptly and leaves the door open behind him as he reenters his apartment. I follow and close it behind me. My heart is pounding.

His apartment is a studio, small, modestly furnished. There is no evidence of the disregard of cleanliness that Tall, Black-Haired, and Grey-Eyed allegedly accused Soren of. No clothes strewn on floor, not even draped on one of the two chairs that sit at a small table that seems to do double duty as a desk. To my left, leaning against one of his many bookshelves, is his bike. There's a futon in couch-configuration against one wall, and most other wall space is covered with more shelves that don't seem capable of accommodating even one more book. He has two windows leading to a fire escape, the humble urban porch, both with decent views of the street below, and there are doors leading to what I assume are a kitchenette and bathroom.

While he has his back to me, I glance over at the table. Lying half-buried under a small pile of books and MoC paperwork is a document printed on thick-stock paper, one edge bent, another corner colored with a slivered half-circle coffee stain. I turn my head to the side to read it. Something Something confer the degree of Doctorate of Philosophy in Literature to Soren R. Aleandaris, something, something, this twenty-first day of May in the year After Colony 201. I pull the diploma out. He turns when he hears me digging through his things.

"Shouldn't you put this someplace more important?" I ask, holding it up.

"Why? It's just a piece of paper." He moves closer and takes it from me. "But you're right. I should probably file it or something." He points to a small filing box on top of the nearest book shelf and sets the paper back on the table. Soren then squares his shoulders and faces me head-on. He seems relaxed enough, but it could just be what he's wearing.

"Why are you here?"

I snort. "I feel like you just asked me that question."

"Five months ago," he notes. Has it already been five months? Has it _only_ been five months?

"I want to apologize."

He smiles coolly. "Hey, look, I get it. I'm not a kid." I never thought he was. "I was taking a chance anyway, going off of rumors that probably aren't even true - "

"They're true," I state plainly. At this point in my life, I'm thoroughly done with feeling like Treize and I did something wrong. We didn't. I'm not ashamed of what we were, but only, perhaps, ashamed of the way I treated him…

Soren looks at me in open-mouthed silence. He's wearing sweatpants, the university's seal on the upper left thigh, and an olive green t-shirt that fits him very well.

"…Really?" he says finally.

"Yes."

He crosses his arms and shrugs. "Well, that doesn't mean anything except what it literally means, but…" He pauses and looks to the floor. When his eyes meet mine again, there's sympathy there that I've never seen from him. "That's really sad, then. What happened with you two."

"Yes. It is." I welcome his assessment. It's validating. I also welcome his compassion, because it feels honest, completely untainted. Good.

"You don't really think that about me, do you?" he asks, shifting his weight to his right leg. "That I asked you to work for me with the expectation that you owed me something."

"No." I shake my head. "I don't think that."

"Because it's not true." His arms fall back to his sides as his momentary lapse in self-certainty dissipates. "You really are perfect for the job. You're very smart. And I like working with you. I like talking to you. I like your perspective."

"Is that all?"

So many pauses from him tonight. This one's not the longest, but it's certainly the heaviest. "Of course it's not. I thought I made that pretty clear."

It seems cheesy, even while I'm acting on it, but I consider that an invite. The first step I take towards him is terrifying, but as I close in, I feel that terror becoming something else. I put my hands on his shoulders. They're firm, a little bony, and fearless. His mild expression urges me on in a silent dare. I dare you to do it, Milliardo Peacecraft.

I'm feeling bold now. His breathing quickens, and I want him. When I kiss him, it feels one-sided for a second or two, but then he starts kissing back, kissing me like he means it. I touch his neck, his face. It's been so long since I've touched someone like this, and, God, I've missed it. He tastes like toothpaste and smells like soap. Good things. Clean things. Fresh things. I feel his hands on my chest. He inhales sharply through his nose and, for a frantic moment, he grabs my shirt tight in his fists and presses himself to me before flattening his palms and then pushing me away.

He laughs breathlessly. "Okay, um, I think you should go now."

I frown as a crowded stream of possible reasons floods my brain. "Why?"

"See," he begins, then hesitates, then resumes, "I'm not that kind of boy."

I'm confused. It must be obvious, because he smiles and rushes to clarify.

"Oh, I'm _that_ kind of boy, but, ah, I don't like to screw around before the first date." He shrugs, and his smile goes lopsided. "I'm a little old-fashioned about these things."

"So you want me to go," I restate. I resist the urge to cross my arms over my chest. I'm not going to pout and sulk like a brat. I'm through with that part of myself.

"Yeah, I think so." He drags his fingernails across his scalp in an uncharacteristically nervous gesture. "But I'll see you tomorrow. And maybe later this week we can, you know, do something proper together. Go to dinner. A film. A gallery." As soon as his hands slide into the pockets of his sweatpants, they're back out and at his sides again. "You know, normal things."

I feel one side of my mouth quirk up. "Normal things."

"Yes. Normal things. You're overdue for some of that, I think."

I don't say anything to that, but he's hit the mark with a master's precision. He slinks around me and pulls open the door to let me out. One thing I never have to worry about with Soren is indecisiveness. He wants me out, and there's no wishy-washy ambiguity about it. I take the direction and step into the hallway. He pulls the door half-closed, wedges himself in the space between, and seems barely capable of containing himself as he sends me on my way.

"So, um…" He's grinning now. "Good night, and I will, ah, see you tomorrow!"

I lean down and kiss him so quickly that he can't avoid it. He blinks stupidly when I pull back, turn, and walk towards the stairwell. He stifles a laugh and closes the door. As I start down the stairs, my ears pick up a muffled "Oh my God…" that is of unmistakable Soren Aleandaris origin.

I walk in a pleasant daze until I hit the cool night air and my phone buzzes in my pocket. When I pick it up, it's Soren.

"Hey, so, there's this Afghan pottery exhibit opening this weekend."

I stop, turn, look up, and see him standing on the fire escape outside his unit.

"I've heard of it," I reply.

"We should go. Together."

"It's funny you should say that, because I actually have two tickets. VIP. Very fancy."

"Ugh, I hate that word. It means I have to look presentable."

"You're a department head. You need to get used to these things."

"Yeah, yeah. Okay."

"So, it's a date."

"Yes. Definitely."

We say our goodbyes again, and I watch him slip back into his apartment and close the window behind him. Overhead, even through the ambient light from the city, I can see the stars. A piece of wreckage, stirred from orbit by a passing shuttle or sweeper team, burns up, painting light across the sky.

I think of Treize, and I'm smiling.

xxxxx

The End.


End file.
